"And now you are sorry."
"So very sorry that if I had the chance again, and knew beforehand all that was to come, I would jump at it like the fish to our hooks," as he hauled one aboard and knocked it an the head. "And you?"
"Ye—es, I think I would have come also. Not perhaps if I had known I would have to float about on that mast. It was so terribly cold,"—with a shiver. "For the rest, I have no regrets, but it is perhaps too soon to say. In ten years hence I may have come to be sorry."
"Ay—ten years hence!" he said musingly. "Many things may happen in ten years. There's a fish on your hook," and she hauled it in and let him dispose of it.
As they sat at supper that night the blanket which supplied the place of companion-doors began to flap, and, going up to look, he found the mist whirling away before a gusty breeze.
"It's going to blow," he told her, "and when it's blown itself out we may have a spell of fine weather again," and he proceeded to block the opening with some planks he had chipped to size as well as he could with his axe.
The wind was rising rapidly, and before they turned in for the night the birds had all come in and were whirling and screaming round the ship, and lighting on it as was their custom in bad weather. But they had grown accustomed to their clamour and both slept soundly.
Wulf was shaken back to life in the dead of the early morning by a restive jerk of the ship at her rusty anchor-chain, followed by a momentary sense of the unusual. And while he lay sleepily considering the matter, his bunk heeled slowly over—over—over, and rolled him right against the side of the ship. The sound of a heavy fall, somewhere beyond, made him scramble out very wide awake, full of wonder, but dimly perceptive of what must have happened. The rusty chain had evidently parted, the ship had drifted ashore broadside on, and the force of the wind had caused her to heel over. The sound he had heard was, he feared, of Miss Drummond's falling out of her bunk.
He flung on some clothes and clawed his way out to the cabin. The floor of it was tilted up at such an angle that he had to claw his way up by the side wall as best he could.
"Are you hurt?" he cried, outside The Girl's door.