It cost them some labor, but they were warmer afterward, and when they drove on again Vane glanced at the bowsprit.
"We'll try to get a bit of galvanized steel in Nanaimo," he said. "I can't risk another smash."
Carroll laughed.
"You'd better be prepared for one, if you mean to drive her as you have been doing." He flung back the saloon scuttle. "You'd have swamped her in another hour or two—the cabin floorings are all awash."
"Then hadn't you better pump her out?" retorted Vane. "After that, you can light the stove. It's beginning to dawn on me that it's a long while since I had anything worth speaking of to eat. The kind of lunch you brought along in the basket isn't sustaining."
They made a bountiful if somewhat primitive meal, in turn, sitting in the dripping saloon which was partly filled with smoke, and Carroll sighed for the comforts he had abandoned. He did not, however, mention his regrets, because he did not expect his comrade's sympathy. Vane seldom noticed what he was eating when he was on board his boat.
The craft, being under reduced sail, drove along more easily during the rest of the afternoon, and they ran into a little colliery town late on the following day. There Vane replaced the broken bobstay with a solid piece of steel, and then sat down to write a letter while Carroll stretched his cramped limbs ashore.
The letter was addressed to Evelyn, and he found it difficult to express himself as he desired. The spoken word, as he had discovered, is now and then awkward to use, but the written one is more evasive and complex still, and he shook his head ruefully over the production when he laid down his pen. This was, perhaps, unnecessary, for having grown calm he had framed a terse and forcible appeal to the girl's sense of justice, which would in all probability have had its effect on her had she received it. Though he hardly realized it, the few simple words were convincing.
Having had no news from Nairn or Jessy, they sailed again in a day or two, bound for Comox farther along the coast, where there was a possibility of communications overtaking them; but in the meanwhile matters which concerned them were moving forward in Vancouver.
It was rather early one afternoon when Jessy called on one of her friends and found her alone. Mrs. Bendle was a young and impulsive woman from one of the eastern cities and she had not made many friends in Vancouver yet, though her husband, whom she had lately married, was a man of some importance there.