“He came to warn us,” Florence whispered to herself. Then a matter of overwhelming interest drove all other thoughts from her mind. She turned to the others.
“Oh, girls!” she exclaimed. “Just think! I found a barrel, a small barrel!”
“On the camping ground?” Jeanne leaped to her feet.
“Nowhere else.”
“And—and what was in it?” Greta was fairly dancing with excitement.
“There wasn’t time to see. It had copper hoops, that’s all I know. Swen came and then—then we were away. I—I covered it up. It won’t run away,” she laughed as Jeanne’s face sobered. “It will keep for another day.”
“But let us go now, tonight!” Jeanne was quite beside herself with excitement.
“No, not tonight,” Florence said with an air of decision. “Tomorrow.”
As things turned out it was to be tonight; but this she could not know.
Some three hours later Florence stirred uneasily in her sleep. It was a very dark night. The cabin on the wrecked Pilgrim in which she slept was a well of darkness. Yet there were times when, for one brief second, every detail of the cabin showed out in bold relief. The over-ornamented walls, done in white and gold, the narrow shelf where a small clock ticked loudly, the rough table with two short legs and two long ones to make up for the slanting deck; all these could be seen plainly. So too could the blond hair of her bunk-mate, Jeanne, sleeping beside her in the berth where for forty years only ship captains had slept.