“Come and help me get the water out of her, Jack. Stay! Miss Fountain had better step into the dry boat, meantime. Now, Jack, look alive; lash her longside aft.”
This done, the two sailors, one standing on the lugger's gunwale, one on the schooner's, handed Miss Fountain into the schooner, and gave her the cushions of the lugger to sit upon. They then went to work with a will, and bailed half a ton of water out.
When she was dry David jumped back into his own boat. “Now, Miss Fountain, your boat is dry, but the sea is getting up, and I think, if I were you, I would stay where you are.”
“I mean to,” said the lady, calmly. “Mr. Talboys, would you mind coming into this boat? We shall be safer here; it—it is larger.”
The gentleman thus addressed was embarrassed between two mortifications, one on each side him. If he came into David's boat he would be second fiddle, he who had gone out of port first fiddle. If he stuck to the lugger Lucy would go off with Dodd, and he would look like a fool coming ashore without her. He hesitated.
David got impatient. “Come, sir,” he cried, “don't you hear the lady invite you? and every moment is precious.” And he held out his hand to him.
Talboys decided on taking it, and he even unbent so far as to jump vigorously—so vigorously that, David pulling him with force at the same moment, he came flying into the schooner like a cannon-ball, and, toppling over on his heels, went down on the seat with his head resting on the weather gunwale, and his legs at a right angle with his back.
“That is one way of boarding a craft,” muttered David, a little discontentedly; then to the old boatman: “Here, fling us that tarpaulin. I say, here is more wind coming; are you sure you can work that lugger, you two?”
“We will be ashore before you can, now there's nobody to bother us,” was the prompt reply.
“Then cast loose; here we are, drifting out to sea.”