His shoes and trousers were
dripping wet. As he ran to her she waited, weeping. He caught her
hands and held them.
"Oh, Dan, Dan!" she cried, "you frightened me so! I thought you had
gone. I thought you were dead. You are not going to leave me again,
are you?"
"Never," said Dan.
Then both started as though the underlying significance of the question
and answer had suddenly dawned upon them. Gently she withdrew her
hands, which Dan did not seek to retain. In conversational tone, he
said:
"I am awfully sorry, Virginia. While you were sleeping, the wind fell,
an hour or two after dawn, and the blue of the water struck me. I
found the Captain's thermometer and lowered it overboard. My best
hopes were realized. We are in the Gulf Stream, Virginia, and moving
northward at about four miles an hour. We are all right now if all
goes well."
"But why were you hiding?" asked the girl.
"I wasn't. I wanted to see if the water had hurt the logwood, so as to
impair its value, and to learn the condition of the hull. You know the
cargo is all that is keeping us afloat. Everything is pretty soggy
down there, but we'll hold together, I guess; and I don't believe the
logwood will suffer a bit. Of course the mahogany is all right. We're
lucky. One schooner in a million has mahogany these days.
Pages:
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203