“And—and you? Can’t we rig up anything for you?” Magda looked round her vaguely.
“I shan’t sleep. I’ll do sentry-go on deck”—laughing. “It wouldn’t do for us both to go comfortably asleep and get run down without even having a shot at making our presence known!”
“Then I’ll keep watch with you,” said Magda.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll go down to the cabin and sleep.”
“Let me stay, Michael. I couldn’t bear to think of your watching all through the night while I slept comfortably below.”
“You won’t sleep comfortably—if my estimate of the look of that bunk is correct. But you’ll be out of the cold. Come, be sensible, Magda. You’re not suitably attired for a night watch. You’d be perished with cold before morning.”
“Well, let us take it in turns, then,” she suggested. “I’ll sleep four hours and then I’ll keep a look-out while you have a rest.”
“No,” he said quietly.
“Then we’ll both watch,” she asserted. Through the starlit dark he could just discern her small head turned defiantly away from him.
“Has it occurred to you,” he asked incisively, “what a night spent in the open might mean to you? Rheumatism is not precisely the kind of thing a dancer wants to cultivate.”