She moved forward toward him into the fuller glow of the fire, and Colton, his hungry eyes fixed on hers, thought of the moon emerging from behind a filmy cloud.
“How did you dare?” she pursued. “You saved them all! I—I—want you to take this.”
Mechanically he stretched forth his hand to meet hers, and she pressed into it something light and soft.
“It was nothing,” he said dazedly, wondering. “Thank you. I—my head feels queer—but I—think—I—could—go to sleep—now.”
He lay gently down on the soft sand, which seemed to rise to meet him. Half swooning and wholly engulfed in sleep, he stretched his great bulk and lay gratefully down, and the materia medica bottles trooped out into the troubled night and were lost in its depths.
Dolly Eavenden stood and looked down, musing upon the strong-limbed figure, and at the hand whose fingers, alone of all the frame, were unrelaxed.
“I wonder if I’ve made a mistake,” she said with misgivings which were strange to her positive and rather self-willed character. “Pshaw! No; it is all right.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DEATH IN THE BUOY
HALF an hour’s sleep is short rations for a man who has experienced little untroubled unconsciousness for five weeks. Colton struggled angrily against the flask.
“I don’t want it, I tell you! Go to the devil and take it with you.” He struck out blindly, angrily. A cool, firm hand, closed around his wrist.