He threw out the anchor, leaped to the shore, and pulled the boat in for her. She prepared to jump, as usual, but as she stood, her slight figure poised on the gunwale, he took her in his arms and lifted her out.
Her face went crimson for an instant, but she turned aside, and walked up the beach, and by the time he had overtaken her the crimson had gone; but the grip of his arms had set her tingling, and her heart was beating fast; and yet it was so foolish to—to mind; for had not Brownie and Willy, and half the fishermen of Shorne Mills, lifted her out of a boat when the sea was rough and the boat unsteady?
"Let us sit down," Drake said.
There was a big bowlder just within the cave, and Nell seated herself on it, and he slid down at her side.
"If Dick is angry, you will have to protect me," she said, breaking the silence which seemed to oppress her with a sense of dread.
"I will; especially as it was my fault," he said. "I didn't want Dick—for a wonder. I wanted to be—alone—with you again. I have wanted it every minute since I left you. Do you know why?"
She had grown pale; but she tried to smile, to meet the ardent gaze of his eyes; but she could not.
"Hadn't—hadn't we better be going back?" she faltered; "it is growing late."
But her voice was so low that she wondered whether she had spoken aloud.
"I want to tell you that I have missed you, how I have longed for you," he went on, not speaking with the fluency for which some of his men friends envied him, but brokenly, as if the words were all inadequate to express his meaning. "All the way up to London I thought of you—I could not help thinking of you. All the time I was there, whether I was alone or in the midst of a mob of people, I thought of you. I could see your face, hear your voice. I could not rest day or night. I felt that I must come back to you; that there would be no peace or contentment for me unless I could see you, hear you, be near you."