“Why don't you anchor this boat? Are you going to let it go ashore and be wrecked?” asked Bradish, with anger that was childish.
“The anchor seems to have been overlooked when we started on this little excursion. As I remember it, there was some hurry and bustle,” returned Mayo, dryly.
“Why didn't you remember it? You got us into this scrape. You slammed and bossed everybody around. You didn't give anybody else a chance to think. You call yourself a sailor! You're a devil of a sailor to come off without an anchor.”
“I suppose so,” admitted Mayo.
“And there wasn't any sense, in coming off in this little boat. We ought to have stayed on the schooner.”
“Ralph!” protested the girl. “Have you completely lost your mind? Don't you know that the schooner sank almost the minute we left it?”
“Mr. Bradish's mind was very much occupied at the time,” said Captain Mayo.
“I don't believe the schooner sank. What does a girl know about such things? That fellow got scared, that's the trouble. There isn't any sense in leaving a big boat in a storm. We would have been taken off before this. We would have been all right. This is what comes of letting a fool boss you around when he is scared,” he raved.
“You are the fool!” she cried, with passion. “Captain Mayo saved us.”
“Saved us from what? Here we are going into the breakers—and he says so—and there's no anchor on here. He took everything out of my hands. Now why doesn't he do something?”