Alice, startled, leaped to her feet. Jack Jepson had disappeared!
CHAPTER XV
"SAIL HO!"
Alice DeVere was not an ordinary sort of girl. She may have been, once, but that was before her advent in moving pictures. There had been times when a sudden emergency would cause her to feel faint, if not actually to succumb to that interesting ailment, which is so useful, especially in stories and books.
But Alice, who was the nearest to the scene of what had just happened, neither fainted, nor became unduly excited. She had seen too many emergencies in the work of taking moving pictures to become "rattled," which is not used in a slangy sense at all, but merely to indicate that one's nerves vibrate too rapidly. Consequently, after her first scream, Alice was almost as calm and collected as could be expected of a veteran sailor.
"Man overboard!" Alice cried, echoing the shout of Hen Lacomb, who, she noticed, after his first hesitation, began lowering a boat, or trying to, for it needed two at that task.
"I'll help!" cried Alice rushing to the aid of the strange man who seemed so friendly with Captain Brisco.
"Oh—you——!" he exclaimed, with a swift look at her. Then he resumed the work of loosing the ropes so they would run freely in the pulley blocks of the davits.
Meanwhile Captain Brisco had bawled out an order to the helmsman to bring the ship up in the wind. A sailor had tossed overboard a life-ring, and then came to help Lacomb lower the boat, for Alice found it beyond her strength, eager as she was.