He was an hour making up his mind what to do. During that time, listening hard for any near signal or answering call, he shouted and kept up a jerky conversation, talking to Beatrix as though she were a child, trying to make her laugh with futile jokes that he would have sworn he couldn't have remembered. Like a Trojan she played up and duly laughed with chattering teeth and many times whipped in quickly with an "Ahoy" herself to help him out.
Suddenly she began to whimper. She couldn't help it. She was so cold and so frightened and to her it seemed as though this were the end of everything.
And that decided him. He picked her up and sat down, put her in his lap, wound his arms round her and put his cheek against her cheek. This girl-child must have all his warmth. He was responsible for this inefficient business. The fool engine had beat him.... She was no longer in his blood. She was a beautiful human thing who must be kept from crying, kept warm, kept alive. The sex in him was utterly dormant. The desire to preserve had conquered it. He was a worried, anxious man with a delicate lovely thing on his hands and it was his fault, curse him, that she was whimpering and chilled and horribly uncomfortable and up against death perhaps. At any moment they might be run down,—at a loose end, out there among the veils. And he held all her softness tight to him and presently began to rub her,—shoulders and arms and legs, to make her blood circulate, to stop her from whimpering, saying the sort of things that men always say to children who have hurt themselves, silly, little, queer things, over and over again.
It was wonderful.... He was so strong and fine, and she cuddled up to his big chest and put her arms about him and gave herself up, wholly, without a qualm. With the same regularity he threw up his head and shouted and she heard the rumble of his voice, and for a long time he held her and rubbed, never letting her blood stop, only cutting into his murmur of comfort by shouting:
"Galatea,—Galatea, ahoy."
The boat was drifting. The water gave it no more than a gentle rock. She shut her eyes and smiled. She had retained the mind of a woman with the body of a child. It was brilliantly clear to her that out there, then, in that drifting boat, all among those closely hung veils of damp web, the spirit of this man was alight, and that in his hands, that had been so hot and eager to touch, there was now the supreme tenderness that is without passion. It was wonderful. It was not happening. This was not earth. He, such a man, who had kissed her foot and put his cheek against her breast, and she, who had exulted in her power to stir and draw on. It must be Heaven. Their clashes and outbursts were over. They had died together and met again in spirit. She had never dreamed of anything like this.
"Galatea,—Galatea, ahoy," yelled Franklin. It was the pit-pit of an engine that came to his tired brain.
"Ahoy to you."
It was not Heaven. It was earth and they were alive and that was Jones's voice. She cuddled closer and her heart began to thump. She didn't want to be taken away.
"At last," said Franklin. "Steady, Jones," he called out. "We're drifting. Slide up alongside and take us on. We're cold.... Well played, little girl," and he kissed her on the mouth.