“Well, you're a wonder! And how the deuce do you manage to keep your feet with the ship rolling like this?”
“Two things I have been taught, since I am ten years old. First, to keep my head, and second to keep my feet. In my profession, one must do both. You will always find me doing that. Good-bye,—we part here. You will not forget zat—that I have retain the bandage for you? And you will not ever despise me?”
As she turned away a roll that must have caused the wallowing vessel to list thirty-five degrees at the very least, sent her headlong across the passage. She slipped down in a heap. The same lurch had sent him reeling against the wall some distance away. She sat up but did not at once attempt to arise. Instead she clutched frantically at her skirt to draw it down over her shapely ankles and calves. In the lantern light he saw the dismayed, shamed look in her eyes and the vivid blush of embarrassment that suffused her pale cheeks. As the ship rolled back, he moved forward to assist her, but she sprang lightly to her feet and hurried on ahead of him, disappearing around a corner.
“Well, by gosh!” he muttered aloud in his surprise. “And she dances half naked before thousands of people every night! Can you beat it! The last person in the world you'd think would care a whoop, and she turns out to be as finicky about her legs as your grandmother. Women certainly are queer.”
With this profound comment on the inconsistency of the sex, he took himself off in the direction of the Captain's quarters,—a forward cabin which served in lieu of the dismantled bridge.
CHAPTER VII.
He saw but little of her during the next forty-eight hours. She seemed to avoid him. At any other time and in other circumstances he undoubtedly would have resented her indifference,—a very common and natural masculine failing,—but in these strenuous hours he was too fully occupied with the affairs of life and death. Once she stopped him to inquire if Miss Clinton was still able to dress his wounds.
“Once a day,” he replied. “She's even pluckier than you are, Madame Obosky.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Indeed?”