“So you think I want to drown you, do you?” said Hawkins, getting very close to her, and trying to look under the wide brim of her hat. “Turn round and look me in the face and say you’re ashamed of yourself for thinking of such a thing.”
“Go on to your steering,” responded Francie, still looking down and wondering if he saw how her hands were trembling.
“But I’m not wanted to steer, and you do want me here, don’t you?” replied Hawkins, his face flushing through the sunburn as he leaned nearer to her, “and you know you never told me last night if you were angry with me or not.”
“Well, I was.”
“Ah, not very—” A rather hot and nervous hand, burned to an unromantic scarlet, turned her face upwards against her will. “Not very?” he said again, looking into her eyes, in which love lay helpless like a prisoner.
“Don’t,” said Francie, yielding the position, powerless, indeed, to do otherwise.
Her delicate defeated face was drawn to his; her young soul rushed with it, and with passionate, innocent sincerity, thought it had found heaven itself. Hawkins could not tell how long it was before he heard again, as if in a dream, the click-clicking of the machinery, and wondered, in the dazed way of a person who is “coming to” after an anæsthetic, how the boat was getting on.
“I must go back to the wheel, darling,” he whispered in the small ear that lay so close to his lips; “I’m afraid we’re a little bit off the course.”
As he spoke, his conscience reminded him that he himself had got a good deal off his course, but he put the thought aside. The launch was duly making for the headland that separated them from Bruff, but Hawkins had not reflected that in rounding the last point he had gone rather nearer to it than was usual, and that he was consequently inside the proper course. This, however, was an easy matter to rectify, and he turned the Serpolette’s head out towards the ordinary channel. A band of rushes lay between him and it, and he steered wide of them to avoid their parent shallow. Suddenly there was a dull shock, a quiver ran through the launch, and Hawkins found himself sitting abruptly on the india-rubber matting at Francie’s feet. The launch had run at full speed upon the soft, muddy shallow that extended unconscionably far beyond the bed of rushes, and her sharp nose was now digging itself deeper and deeper into the mud. Hawkins lost no time in reversing the engine, but by the time they had gone full speed astern for five minutes, and had succeeded only in lashing the water into a thick, pea-soupy foam all round them, he began to feel exceedingly anxious as to their prospects of getting off again.
“Well, we’ve been and gone and done it this time,” he said, with a laugh that had considerably more discomfiture than mirth in it; “I expect we’ve got to stay here till we’re taken off.”