Then a shriek of uncontrollable pain rent the air. In her heavy fall she had twisted or broken one of her ankles.
The pain was so excruciating that after one moment of supreme agony, she trembled all over, then relapsed into unconsciousness.
It was, indeed, Dorian Mountcastle's yacht that had come into harbor at Fortune's Bay. The Reverend Mr. Irwin had been put ashore more than a week previous and sent back to New York with a full purse of gold and a new stock of experience. Captain Van Hise and the doctor had remained by Dorian, and helped him pull through his tedious illness.
He was now slowly convalescing, but there were two things that greatly retarded his recovery. One was a deep and silent remorse over the death of Donald Kayne, whom he had last seen stretched apparently dead upon the sands at Pirate Beach. The other cause was anxiety over Nita, about whom the surgeon still kept up the little fiction of sea-sickness.
One of Dorian's first conscious requests on hearing the story of his bride's illness was that they should put into land so that Nita might get well.
"And then we will continue our journey on land, for although I enjoy yachting very much myself, I do not wish for my poor little wife to suffer from the agonies of sea-sickness," he said tenderly.
So by one of the accidents of fate that we call blind chance the Nita was steered into Fortune's Bay.
"And what the deuce shall we do now? He's asking for her all the time, and mad with impatience for a sight of her face," groaned Van Hise to the doctor that night when they were smoking together upon deck. The hour was late, nearing midnight, and the surgeon yawned sleepily.