The young woman was letting down the flaps of her sleeping-tent, and her answer was entirely irrelevant.
"I am glad the protective instinct was sufficiently alive to keep you from telling me at the time," she said, with a little shudder which she did not try to conceal. "You may not believe it, Donald Prime, but I still have a few of the civilized weaknesses. Good night; and don't sit up too long with that horrid tobacco."
IX
SHIPWRECK
Though the castaways had not especially intended to observe the day of rest, they did so, the Sunday dawning wet and stormy, with lowering clouds and foggy intervals between the showers to make navigation extrahazardous. When the rain settled into a steady downpour they pulled the canoe out of water, turning it bottom-side up to serve as a roof to shelter them. In the afternoon Prime took one of the guns and went afield, in the hope of finding fresh meat of some sort, though it was out of season and he was more than dubious as to his skill as either a hunter or a marksman. But the smoked meats were becoming terribly monotonous, and they had not yet had the courage to try the pemmican. Quite naturally, nothing came of the hunting expedition save a thorough and prolonged soaking of the hunter.
"The wild things have more sense than I have," he announced on his return. "They know enough to stay in out of the rain. Can you stand the cold-storage stuff a little while longer?"
Lucetta said she could, and specialized the Sunday-evening meal by concocting an appetizing pan-stew of smoked venison and potatoes to vary the deadly monotonies.
The Monday morning brought a return of the fine weather. The storm had blown itself out during the night and the skies were clearing. The day of rain had swollen the river quite perceptibly, and a short distance below their Sunday camp its volume was further augmented by the inflow of another river from the east, which fairly doubled its size.