“I’m afraid you’re rather wet,” he said, when he got his breath again. “Still, I really couldn’t help it. There was a good deal more sea than I had expected.”
Miss Hamilton, who sat down on a boulder with the 179 water dripping from her skirt, looked ruefully at him and the dinghy, which was rolling over in the surf.
“How are we going to get off?” she inquired.
“Not in that dinghy, any way,” answered Nasmyth. “She has knocked all one bilge in. They’ll probably send the Tillicum’s gig ashore for us by-and-by.”
“But she’s going away!” said the girl, with a gasp of consternation.
Nasmyth, who turned round, saw that this was certainly the case. A cloud of steam blew away from beside the yacht’s funnel, and in another moment the shriek of a whistle reached him.
“I don’t think we need worry about that,” he remarked. “They evidently watched us get ashore. You see, with the breeze freshening she couldn’t very well lie where she was. Still, if I remember, there’s an inlet a couple of leagues or so away along the coast where she’d find shelter.”
“But why didn’t they send for us first?”
“The trouble is that there is really a nasty sea, and they couldn’t very well take us off if they knocked a big hole in the gig. I fancy the wisest thing would be to walk towards that inlet along the beach.”
They set off, when Nasmyth had pulled the dinghy out, but the beach was strewn with driftwood which was difficult to flounder over, as well as very rough. They made no greater progress when they tried the Bush. Fallen trees lay across one another, and there were thorny thickets in between, while, here and there, the undergrowth seemed as impenetrable as a wall. By-and-by it commenced to rain, and for an hour or two they plodded on dejectedly through the pitiless deluge. It rains exceedingly hard in that country. At last the girl sat down on a fallen tree. She had already lost her hat, and the water soaked out of Nasmyth’s jacket, which he had tied by the arms about her shoulders. Her drenched skirt clung about her, 180 rent to tatters, and one of her little shoes was caked with mire. The other gaped open.