I closed my lips tightly and clutched the wheel with both hands. Oh, I had been a brute, a brute! I should have known that she was not herself, that she was frightened and nervous and distraught. I should have been considerate and forbearing. I should have remembered that she was only a girl, hysterical and weak. Instead I had—
“Miss Colton,” I begged, “please don't. Please!”
No answer; only another sob. I tried again.
“I have been a cad,” I cried. “I have treated you abominably. I don't expect you to forgive me, but—”
“I—I am so frightened!” The confession was a soliloquy, I think; not addressed to me at all. But I heard it and forgot everything else. I let go of the wheel altogether and bent over her, both hands outstretched, to—the Lord knows what. I was not responsible just then.
But while I still hesitated, while my hands were still in the air above her, before they touched her, I was brought back to sanity with a rude shock. A barrel or so of cold water came pouring over the rail and drenched us both. The launch, being left without a helmsman, had swung into the trough of the sea and this was the result.
I am not really sure what happened in the next few seconds. I must, I imagine, have seized the wheel with one hand and my passenger with the other. At any rate, when the smoke, so to speak, had cleared, the Comfort was headed on her old course once more, I was back on the bench by the wheel, Mabel Colton's head was on my shoulder, and I was telling her over and over that it was all right now, there was no danger, we were perfectly safe, and various inanities of that sort.
She was breathing quickly, but she sobbed no more. I was glad of that.
“You are sure you are not hurt?” I asked, anxiously.
“Yes—yes, I think so,” she answered, faintly. “What was it? I—I thought we were sinking.”