Clifton began. He was not quite sure about the lines, but he recalled the situation clearly enough. “Best go below, my daughter,” were the words which filled the room with a ringing effect. “I have not seen a gull since the second watch ended, and they do not hide from ordinary storms. I fear we may be caught in a tempest.”
“Look at them!” she screamed. “Look! Look!”
Bonnie May clasped her hands in a frenzy of earnestness. Her words came with intense eloquence: “Let me stay with you, father. I fear no storm while I am by your side.”
Her voice filled the room with tones which were intense, even, resonant, golden.
Mrs. Harrod, regarding her incredulously, put out a hand and touched Flora on the arm. No one else stirred.
There came Clifton’s response: “But, child, I tell you Davy Jones’s locker fairly gapes in gales like this. I bid you go below.”
The response came with even greater intensity: “But tell me first, father: Would a raft live in such a sea as this?”
So the rather silly lines were repeated, back and forth. But they scarcely seemed silly. The two players were putting a tremendous earnestness into them, and the “audience” felt no inclination at all to smile.
The two players came to the point in the story where the ship struck a rock, and their intensity was more than doubled. The raft began its part in the scene, but nobody looked at it for a time.