Once again she was breathless. Her blouse was turbulent just below her throat.
“If Brian does not cross himself until he feels more fatigue than he would after a pretence at rowing, I’ll never play Banshee again,” said the girl. “Ta, ta, mon Prince; a rivederci.”
He watched her poise herself for the leap from the rock where she was standing, to the track—her grace was exquisite—it suggested that of the lithe antelope. The leap took her beyond his sight, and he did not venture immediately to a point whence he could regain possession of her with his eyes. But when he heard the sound of her voice singing a snatch of song—it was actually “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”—the Habanera from “Carmen”—he judged that she had reached the second angle of the zig-zag downward, and he took a step into the moonlight.
There she went, lilting the song and keeping time with her feet, until she reached the ledge where the boat was moored. She unfastened the painter, hauled the boat close, and he heard the sound of the plunge of the bows as she jumped on one of the beams, the force of her jump sending the boat far from shore.
She sat for some minutes on the beam amidship, listlessly allowing the boat to drift away from the rocks, then she put out her hands for the oars. Her right hand grasped one, but there was none for the left to grasp. Harold perceived that one of the oars had disappeared.
There was the boat twenty yards from the rock drifting away beyond the control of the girl.
CHAPTER IX.—ON THE HELPLESSNESS OF WOMAN.
THE girl had shown so much adroitness in the management of the little craft previously, he felt—with deep regret—that she would be quite equal to her present emergency. He was mistaken. She had reached the end of her resources in navigation when she had run the boat alongside the landing place. He saw—with great satisfaction—that with only one oar she was helpless.