“Why,” Roberta returned resignedly, “do you repeat the if so many times? Isn’t the Cumberland now sure to come in second?”
“The Corinthian’s caught up with us now. They’re a little faster than this ship ordinarily, and at present they’re under emphatic orders to make as fast a passage as possible. Even if I should give away our hand by offering to pay our captain for extra coal he’d burn to beat the Corinthian in, this ship couldn’t do it.”
“Exactly,” Roberta accepted. “So why pretend that I think I’m escaping? And why say ‘our’ hand? It was entirely your idea that this ship was sure to get in before the Corinthian—not mine.”
Andy fumed helplessly. He idly watched men working on the woodwork beside the wireless cabin. Before painting, they were sandpapering a strip, rasping coarse sandpaper, tacked on blocks, over the patch to be painted. The harsh, grating sound came with a short rasp, then longer, then shorter. Roberta looked about.
“I thought that was the wireless for a minute,” she said.
“Sounds like it.”
People passed, glancing at them curiously. “I’d better ask you,” Roberta said, “what are our relations supposed to be since we’ve been on board? Your communication by note, evidently meant to be enigmatic if it fell into false hands, was enigmatic.”
“There appeared to be a choice of two explanations only, considering the way we piled on board at the last minute at once and demanded widely separated cabins. Either we must be married and part at the gangplank, or else, according to original scenario, we were eloping, with papa’s pursuit so close that we hadn’t had time to drop in on the minister. I choose the latter.”
“With the result?”
Andy confessed: “That yesterday the captain—most romantic of Scots—blushingly put forward his qualifications as legal wedlocker on the high seas.”