"Oh, I'll be all right in a little while," Jack said. "I don't need no one to stand my trick on deck. I'll be back shortly."
He went below, the water dripping from him. The ship was put back on her course. The excitement had not lasted long.
"Too bad you didn't have a camera ready, Russ," said Paul to the operator, when matters were normal aboard the Mary Ellen once more. "You might have filmed a good rescue scene."
"I was too much excited to think about that," Russ admitted. "Besides, we are going to have plenty of rescue stuff in a few days, and this wasn't a particularly thrilling one. Poor old Jack! I wonder how it feels to fall overboard?"
"Not very pleasant," Paul said. He had done it more than once in the interests of the pictures.
Alice, going below for something a little later, met the old salt on his way to the deck again, he having changed to dry garments.
"Oh, are you all right?" she asked anxiously, for she and her sister, as well as Mr. DeVere, had taken a liking to Jepson. "Are you all right?"
"All right, Miss Alice," he replied. "No harm done at all."
"I thought sailors never fell overboard," she said, half jokingly. "I supposed they were so sure-footed that accidents like that never happened to them."
"They don't—not usual like, Miss," said Jack with that earnest, honest air that characterized him.