Walker was about to take her to the saloon, whence an inner staircase
communicated with the principal staterooms, but she knew that the door
leading to the promenade deck had been left unlocked, so she signaled him
to lead her the speediest way. Speak she could not. Although there was
a perceptible improvement in the weather, Elsie found the wind even
harder to combat than when she traversed the deck with Courtenay. This
apparent contradiction arose from the fact that during their early
dealing with the boats the sailors had cut away the greater part of the
canvas shield rigged to protect passengers from adventurous seas.
Nevertheless, all flustered and breathless as she was, she held Walker
back when he would have left her in the shelter of her cabin.
"Do spare me one moment," she pleaded. "When I have put on dry clothing,
what am I to do? Where am I to go? I will do anything rather than
remain alone."
Walker jammed himself in the doorway to break the violence of the
unceasing deluge of spray.
"Well, missie," he said, "I'm examining the engines, Mistaw Tollemache is
fi-wing up the donkey-boiler, an' Doctaw Chwistobal is with Mistaw Boyle.
You know whe-aw the captain is, so I weckon yo' best place is the saloon."
"Dr. Christobal said you were making a raft?"
"That's wight. But when the ship got off, we tackled othaw jobs. She is
ow-ah best waft."
"And--do you think--we have any chance."
"Nevah say 'die,' missie. Owt can happen at sea."
She made a guess at the meaning of "owt."
"May I not look after some of the injured men?"
"That you can't," was Walker's prompt assurance. "You'd bettaw stick to
the saloon. I'll tell the captain yo' the-aw."
"Tell him? Are you returning to the bridge?"
"Telephone!" shouted Walker, as an unusually heavy sea caused him to slam
the door unceremoniously. He bolted it, too. Not if he could help it
would his charge come out on that storm-swept deck unattended.
The electric light glowed brightly in Elsie's cabin, exactly as she had
left it an hour ago. This was one of the anomalous conditions of the
disaster. It lent a queer sense of Midsummer madness to the night's
doings. In a few days it would be Christmas, the Christmas of sunshine
and flowers known only to that lesser portion of the habitable earth
south of the line. In Valparaiso the weather was stifling, yet here, not
so very far away, it was bitterly cold. And the ship was driving
headlong to destruction, though electric bells and switches were at
command in a luxuriously furnished apartment, while the engineer had just
spoken of the telephone as a means of conversing with the captain. Away
down in her feminine heart the girl wondered why Courtenay himself had
not come to her. Why had he sent Christobal first and Walker
subsequently? Oh, of course he had more urgent matters to attend to,
though, in the helpless condition of the ship, it was difficult to
appreciate their precise degrees of importance.