There it was, the wave! It came up and over the two, tugged at them, first their hips, and then their feet, and finally reluctantly, went on over the side without them.
Nan screamed, again and again. The form at her hand seemed to have no life. There was no answer to her call. She, herself, was weaker, much weaker than she thought.
She got up slowly and painfully and tried to pull her burden after her. She couldn’t budge it. She could hear, as from some far off land, the waves coming again. She shook her head, aware now that her senses had been dulled. Now, she could count them again, one, two—the second one splashed lightly over the deck. They were getting higher all the time. Three, four—Nan reached down with her strained arm, put it under the limp form, and half dragged, half carried it to the door, a partial shelter, as the fifth wave swept like a fury over the deck.
Nan reached up to open the door. It was locked. In a frenzy, she beat upon it. It was double locked against the storm! She knocked it again, screamed, and then, for the first time in her life, fainted dead away.
CHAPTER XV
IN THE SHIP’S HOSPITAL
“I hope she dies of pneumonia!” Bess was frankly crying as she walked down the corridor toward the ship’s hospital. “I’d like nothing better than to witness a funeral at sea, if it was Linda Riggs’,” she stated most emphatically, and then wiped her eyes.
“She’s a cat, that’s what she is or she would have died long ago. Remember,” she recalled, “when we planned that surprise party on Nan back in Lakeview and that black cat came into the room. That was the soul of Linda Riggs,” Bess vowed. “She’s a cat and a witch.”
Grace looked impressed, but Laura snickered.