“Bail or drown!” repeated Mayo. To the girl he said: “This seems to be the only way of getting work out of cowards. They'll have to do it. I'm about done for.”
The waves were lifting and dropping them in dizzying fashion. There was suddenly a more violent tossing of the water.
“That's the old packet! She went under then!” Mayo explained. “Thank the Lord we are out of her clutches! I was afraid we were stuck there.”
“Is there any hope for us now?” she inquired.
“I don't know. If the boat stays afloat and the wind doesn't haul and knock this sea crossways, if somebody sees us in the morning, if we don't get rolled onto the coast in the breakers and—” He did not finish.
“It seems that a lot of things can happen at sea,” she suggested.
“That fact has been proved to me in the past few weeks.”
“You mean in the past few hours, don't you?”
“Miss Marston, what has happened on that schooner is a part of the business, and a sailor must take it as it comes along. I wish nothing worse had happened to me than what's happening now.”
She made no reply.