The reply caused Mrs. Courtney a hearty laugh, while Mr. Dalken found ample pleasure for the next week in referring to that night’s experience, and to their curt thanks to his humanitarian impulses.
Elizabeth had not joined her father’s guests at tea that late afternoon for the very good reason that she threw herself upon the bed in her room and was glad enough to remain there for several days. She had eaten three times as much candy and fruit as any one of her companions, and now she was paying the price for self-indulgence. Where now were all her brags about being such a splendid sailor!
It was not an individual weakness on the part of Polly and Eleanor that they succumbed to the attack of sea sickness soon after they reached their small rooms. But they were not aware at the time that all adults, excepting Mr. Dalken and Mrs. Courtney, had decided against dining that night, and remained in their own rooms instead. Had the two girls dreamed of the truth, that the two pawns in their match-making game were enjoying a tête-à-tête dinner and evening together, this knowledge would have done much to console them for their weird sensations within.
As the evening advanced the gale increased, and those who felt too ill to leave their beds feared lest they might survive till morning. The yacht could not sink quick enough to please them. Elizabeth was one of this group of morbid sailors. The members of the other group who felt able to hold up their heads and take a squint at the turbulent waters and sky now and then when the craft seemed to spin about on a pivot, or suddenly soar to the sky and as quickly change its course to sink to the bottom of the sea, prayed and prayed that the shores of Florida might loom up within the next few hours—that they might go ashore.
These prayers, being selfish ones, were not answered, and the coast of Florida remained where it had been placed in the order of arranging the New World.
Having managed to drag herself across her room to the porthole, Polly looked out to see whether the moon was the next stop. She thought the yacht had been going, prow upwards, for the last hour. To her amazement she saw they were still on the sea, but such a sea! So tumbled and troubled that she wished for oil to pour upon it.
Eleanor and Polly shared one room, and now Eleanor lifted her head and wailed: “What do you see, Poll?”
“I see sea, that’s all. Oh, my head!” and Polly fell into a chair and caught her head between her hands.
In spite of her wish to die, Eleanor could not refrain from laughing at her chum. “I should have said you see saw, instead of see sea, judging from the ‘now we go up, and now we go down’ behavior of the board we are on.”
But no answering smile came from Polly’s somber face.