" She started forward suddenly.
"What have you under your coat sleeves? Are your arms bandaged?" she
cried. "And your neck, too?"
Dan laughed.
"It's nothing," he said. "My hands and arms and the back of my neck
were pretty well scorched. I dug some picric acid out of the Captain's
medicine chest and tied myself up a bit. I am all right now. The pain
has all disappeared."
The girl flushed.
"And you didn't ask me to help you?"
"There was absolutely no need. Honestly, if I had needed to bother you
I should not have hesitated. The flames did not touch me, you know,
just their hot breath; the bandages do not amount to anything."
"Well," replied Virginia, shaking her head, "I don't like it one bit.
If I can do anything to repay you, however slightly, for all you have
done for me, please give me the opportunity."
"I shall remember that," said Dan.
CHAPTER XIII
NIGHT ON THE DERELICT
When the sun that evening sank like a red ball behind the purple
horizon, Dan laid aside various implements and went aft with the
realization of a day well spent. He had cleared the deck. Using the
mainboom and a goodly section of the tattered canvas he had improvised
a capacious leg-of-mutton sail which flapped idly in the almost
motionless air.
He found Virginia seated in a camp lounging-chair, with a paper-covered
novel lying open face downward in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the
dusk which seemed rolling toward them over the sea like a fog.
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