Now, fast aground, she saw her absent-minded error. And she jumped to her feet, vainly reversing the engine in an effort to back free of the sand wherein the prow had wedged itself so tightly. But Gavin Brice had already taken charge of the situation.
Stepping overside into the shallow water, he picked up the astounded and vainly protesting girl, bodily, holding her close to him with one arm, while, with his free hand he caught the painter and dragged the boat behind him into water too low for it to float off until the change of tide.
It was the work of a bare ten seconds, from the time he stepped into the shallows until he had brought Claire to the dry sand of the beach.
"Set me down!" she was demanding sternly, for the third time, as she struggled with futile repugnance to slip from his gently firm grip. "I—"
"Certainly," acquiesced Gavin, lowering her to the sand, and steadying her for an instant, until her feet could find their balance. "Only please don't glare at me as though I had struck you. I didn't think you'd want to get those little white shoes of yours all wet. So I took the liberty of carrying you. My own shoes, and all the rest of me, are drenched beyond cure anyhow. So another bit of immersion didn't do me any harm."
He spoke in a careless, matter-of-fact manner, and as he talked he was leading the way up the short beach, toward the northernmost edge of the mangrove swamp. Claire could not well take further offence at a service which apparently had been rendered to her out of the merest common politeness. So, after another icy look at his unconscious back, she followed wordlessly in Brice's wake.
Now that he was on dry land again and on his way to the house where, at the very least, a stormy scene might be expected, the man's spirits seemed to rise, almost boyishly. The blood was running again through his veins. The cool night air was drying his soaked clothes. The prospect of possible adventure stirred him.
Blithely he sought the shoreward entrance to the hidden path, by the mental notes he had made of its exact whereabouts when Bobby Burns had happened upon its secret. And, in another half-minute he had drawn aside the screen of growing boughs and was standing aside for Claire to enter the path.
"You see," he explained, impersonally, "this path is a very nice little mystery. But, like most mysteries, it is quite simple, when once you know your way in and out of it. I knew where it was when I was a kid, but I couldn't remember the spot where it came out here. Back yonder, a bit to northward, I came upon Roke, yesterday. I gather he had been visiting your house or Hade's, by way of the hidden path, and was on his way back to his boat, to return to Roustabout Key, when he happened upon Bobby Burns—and then on me. He must have wondered where I vanished to. For he couldn't have seen me enter the path. Maybe he mentioned that to Hade, too, this afternoon. If Hade thought I knew the path, he'd think I knew a good deal more …. By the way," he added, to the ostentatiously unlistening Claire, "that's the second time you've stumbled. And both times, you were too far ahead for me to catch you. This is the best part of the path, too—the straightest and the least dark part. If we stumble here, we'll tumble, farther on, unless you use that flashlight of yours. May I trouble you to—?"
"I forgot," she said stiffly, as she drew the torch from her pocket and pressed its button.