"Why, no," he said slowly. "Why do you think that?"
"Oh, nothing," I replied. "I thought his narrow escape of the morning would have made him careful."
It was a few hours after this conversation that I had my first chance of speaking to Edith Herndon since the moment we had run into the disturbance. The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the wind like the whips of invisible devils.
"Oh, Mr. Verslun, we are a wreck!" she cried.
"Not quite," I said, gripping her arm to steady her as The Waif took a header. "We've weathered the worst of it and we're still sound. The storm centre has slipped away to the north, and we can count ourselves out of the ruction for the present."
Her shapely hand clutched my wet oilskins as the yacht plunged from the back of an enormous swell, and I was so busy noting the beauty of the hand that I had no eye for the sallow face that peeped from the companion. Leith's bass voice rose above the noise of the waves, and there was an angry note in it.
"This isn't a nice place for you, Miss Edith!" he cried.
The girl half turned her head, looked at him for a second, then without any intimation that she had heard what he said, she turned again toward me and started to cross-examine me upon the amount of damage we had sustained. I thought that the white, shapely hand tightened its grip upon my wet sleeve at the moment Leith's bass voice came booming to our ears, and I blessed the big brute's interference for the thrill which I derived from the pressure of her fingers upon the greasy coat.
But Leith was not to be denied. The cold stare, instead of driving him back into the cabin, only roused his temper. Very cautiously he climbed along the heaving deck to the point where we were standing, and, clutching a rope, he swayed backward and forward immediately behind us.
"Miss Edith!" he called.