Miss Merril turned and looked at him as he sat on the Sorata's counter in the navy cap, and a smile crept into her eyes.
"Still," she said, "perhaps it is, after all, worth while to face them."
They both remembered that afterward, but in the meanwhile it did not strike Jimmy as in any way incongruous that she should talk to him in such a fashion or credit him with more comprehension than one would expect from a professional yacht-hand.
"I don't know," he said simply. "One's heart is apt to fail when one looks forward and sees only the snow-squalls to drive one back to leeward, and the steep head seas."
Then he stood up suddenly with a little laugh as Louis came slouching aft from the forecastle scuttle.
"I'm relieved, and I had better see whether they want anything in the saloon," he said.
It appeared that they wanted nothing, and when he crawled into the forecastle Valentine looked at him with evident curiosity.
"You had apparently a good deal to say to Miss Merril," he observed. "Might one ask what you found to talk about?"
"The last topic was whether it is worth while to hang on and fight one's way to windward when the outlook is black. If I understood her correctly, she seems to believe it is."
Valentine grinned sardonically. "Did you discuss it like a German philosopher, or as a forecastle hand? I suppose it never struck you that it's rather an unusual subject for a yachting roustabout to go into with a young lady passenger?"