"Father went this way," he muttered, "and I guess it's good enough for me. He was a better man than I am. Poor Hetty!" He looked for the light again, giving all his thought to it. Then he sighed. "I wish to God," he went on, "that we'd let her be! She wouldn't have been here if we hadn't teased her about China. I wish she was there. This is no way for her to go—a girl like her." Then slowly at last he descended to the deck.
At the wheel, Captain March was growing unutterably weary, and something like the same thoughts were passing through his mind.
"Lord," he said, "I haven't ever been much of a praying man, and I ain't going to begin now, when I can't shift for myself. I'd be ashamed. You know I've tried to do right. I ain't afraid of death, but I hate to lose the old boat. I've always had good luck, and I guess I've kind o' got in the way of thinking it was going to last. I'd like to have it. I rather expected to die at home, and be buried alongside of mother. She thought of that a good deal." Of his wife and daughter he would not trust himself to think.
He looked up as Medbury approached him, but turned his eyes away immediately. He saw that Culebra light had not been sighted.
Medbury simply shook his head and stepped back, but the captain called him nearer.
"I guess it's too early," he said. "Go up again soon, and if we haven't made it then, we'll try to get a sounding. See if that steward left any cold tea below, will you?"
As Medbury went down the companionway and into the pantry, a figure came softly out of the girls' room and tiptoed across the cabin. It was Hetty. As she neared the pantry, the swinging floor tripped her and sent her flying into the room behind Medbury's back. She giggled hysterically as he turned with a start.
"Good Lord, Hetty!" he exclaimed, "haven't you gone to sleep yet?"
"I couldn't sleep," she said plaintively. "I waited for you; I thought you'd never come." She hesitated, laid her hand on his arm, and continued slowly: "Now I want you to tell me the truth—the truth. I'm not a child. I can bear it. I know we are in great danger—isn't it so?"
He hesitated and looked away, and she dropped her hand to her side.