Then gaining a footing in the mess of gear, he assisted the
girl to her feet on the tottering grating, and placed her hand on the
chains.
"Hold here tight," he said. She nodded, and Dan looked about for the
easiest way to the deck. It was not difficult to find. The end of the
jib-boom had dropped into the water, making an easy incline, and the
foremast had also fallen over the bow and was directly alongside. Both
were covered with sections of canvas and a maze of gear and rigging.
Dan clambered up, and then, lying flat across the bowsprit and the
mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled
her to his side. Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among
the wreckage to the deck.
And there with the dawn beginning to glow rosily far on the eastern rim
of the slaty waste the girl sighed and sank to her knees; and Dan, his
head reeling with sleep and exhaustion, sank also. When the darkness
had all gone and the sun had cleared the horizon, the first level rays
flooded the sullen deck of a gray-green hulk, sodden, desolate, and
fell upon the faces of a man and woman sleeping, her head resting on
his shoulder, strands of her dark hair lying across his face.
CHAPTER XII
ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
As the sun rose higher still they slept.
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