“It wouldn’t be a bad notion,” observed Mr Meldrum, who just then came up to where the two were talking, “to take another trip out to the ship in the jolly-boat and see whether we could not land some more things that might be of use to us?”
“Sure the hould’s gutted now enthirely,” said the Irish mate sadly, “and the divil a hap’orth we’d get by going. Look at the say that’s running, too; and considther the long pull out there and back again—not that I wouldn’t be afther going, sorr, if you were to say the word!”
“Oh, no, never mind,” replied Mr Meldrum. “There’s not the slightest necessity for it, for I believe we brought away all the provisions that were left in her, and we’d find little enough now! I only thought we might secure some more of the timber work, as there doesn’t seem to be a particle of wood on the island.”
“We’d better wait till she breaks up, sorr,” said Mr McCarthy; “sure and it’ll float in thin to us, widout the throuble of fetching it.”
“All right!” answered the other. So the contemplated last trip to the stranded vessel would have been abandoned, had not Florry at that moment rushed up to her father.
“Oh, poor puss!” she exclaimed, half-crying and almost breathless with excitement as she clung to his arm and looked up into his face entreatingly.
“Puss!” repeated Mr Meldrum in astonishment; “what puss?”
“The—the—poor pussy cat we used to play with in the cabin,” sobbed Florry. “It was shut up by the stewardess, and has been left behind in the ship!”
“Yes, sir,” said Mary Llewellyn, who with Kate had followed Florry. “I clean forgot the creature in the flurry of coming away. I locked it in the pantry, as it seemed frightened and was scurrying about the cuddy; and when we went on deck, I didn’t think to take it out, so there it’ll be starved to death, or drownded!”
“It was my fault as well,” interposed Kate, looking quite as unhappy as her sister and the stewardess. “I told Mary to lock it up.”