Rex looked downward with the pleased expression on his own face contrasting strangely with the anxious countenances of the two occupants of the launch.
"It's my friends, Ainsworth and Trascott, from the yacht," he explained to the woman at his side.
"I was beginning to wonder why they hadn't showed up. You see they must have been out before I awakened, for they had taken the launch to the rescue."
"Come off!" commanded Ainsworth, peremptorily. "Can't you see you're last, you two mooning fools? The old coffin will drop in a minute."
They could hear Trascott's mild protest at Ainsworth's trenchant phrasing of the situation, and Britton laughed.
"Trascott's a curate," he said, disengaging a rope ladder for their own use, "a very orthodox, English curate! Sometimes he doesn't approve of his friend's strenuous speech. You'll have to overlook it, though. Ainsworth is a lawyer, and he thinks he has us in the witness-box."
They were descending the rope-ladder as he spoke, the lady going first, and Cyril Ainsworth heard the last part of his host's comment.
"It's no witness-box you're in, Britton," he growled. "It's a bally old tub, and you needn't think because you're dressed in beautiful, silk pyjamas that you must stay there till you have to swim. If I were the lady, I would vigorously object to getting wet."
Ainsworth emphasized his tirade with a swift revolution of the engine-crank. The curate cast off the rope, and they puffed away from the water-logged vessel. Gleaming white against the inky color of her side was the nameplate–Constantine.
Britton pulled an overcoat and a pair of sea-boots from a locker and put them on.