So I went back to the boat, having carefully wrapped up Euphemia, to endeavor to save the girl. I found that the boarder had so arranged the gang-plank that it was possible, without a very great exercise of agility, to pass from the shore to the boat. When I first saw him, on reaching the shelving deck, he was staggering up the stairs with a dining-room chair and a large framed engraving of Raphael's Dante—an ugly picture, but full of true feeling; at least so Euphemia always declared, though I am not quite sure that I know what she meant.
“Where is Pomona?” I said, endeavoring to stand on the hill-side of the deck.
“I don't know,” said he, “but we must get the things out. The tide's rising and the wind's getting up. The boat will go over before we know it.”
“But we must find the girl,” I said. “She can't be left to drown.”
“I don't think it would matter much,” said he, getting over the side of the boat with his awkward load. “She would be of about as much use drowned as any other way. If it hadn't been for that hole she cut in the side of the boat, this would never have happened.”
“You don't think it was that!” I said, holding the picture and the chair while he let himself down to the gang-plank.
“Yes, it was,” he replied. “The tide's very high, and the water got over that hole and rushed in. The water and the wind will finish this old craft before very long.”
And then he took his load from me and dashed down the gang-plank. I went below to look for Pomona. The lantern still hung on the nail, and I took it down and went into the kitchen. There was Pomona, dressed, and with her hat on, quietly packing some things in a basket.
“Come, hurry out of this,” I cried. “Don't you know that this house—this boat, I mean, is a wreck?”
“Yes, sma'am—sir, I mean—I know it, and I suppose we shall soon be at the mercy of the waves.”