The night was just thinning towards the dawn. The Girl was sitting on the coaming of the hatch in a state of collapse, her wet garment clinging clammily about her, her head in her hands, her slender figure shaken with convulsive sobs. His anger boiled furiously at thought of the malice that had planned her suffering—her possible death. Love and pity swelled his heart for her. She looked so utterly forlorn and broken with the fight.
"It is all right, dear!"—he could not help it, it slipped out in spite of him. "Come away down to the cabin. You are shivering. You are wet through and torn to pieces. You have done splendidly, but it was an upsetting piece of business all round. Come!" and he put his arm under hers and drew her up.
She was so limp, however, that he had almost to carry her, and the feel of her unconscious sobs under his enfolding arm quickened his blood again.
At the companion-doors he had to release her and go back for his axe. A stout plank had been cunningly bound against the doors by a rope tied round the companion. His lips tightened sternly as he chopped the rope through and the plank fell to the deck.
He carried her gently down and laid her on his blankets, put some sticks on the fire and blew them into flame, and set on the kettle, which was fortunately full. By the time he had made some coffee and dashed it with rum, she had recovered herself and was sitting up in the blankets with one drawn closely about her.
"That was an unnerving business," he said, as he handed her her cup. "I'm afraid you had the worst of it. You have a lot of scratches—and your hands! Oh, I am truly sorry——"
"It was the rope," she said quietly, looking at the rasped rawness of them. "It was all horrible. How did it get on fire?"
"It was a deliberate attempt on the part of that wretch to make an end of us."
"No!"—and she gazed at him in blankest amazement.
"Without doubt. He blocked our doors here with a plank and a rope, and then started the fire down in the hold."