"Take me home," she muttered, leaning helpless against the side, and Will headed the boat for the beach.
"Oh, Will!" she said, when they were nearly back, "how can I ever thank you for saving my life?"
"Pshaw!" he exclaimed; "that was nothing. You know I told you I am a pretty good swimmer."
"A minute more—" she gasped; then her feelings overcame her, and she buried her face in her hands.
When the boat was anchored, Vic waded ashore, and ran toward the house very spryly for a girl who had been so weak a few minutes before. The two fathers had returned, and were sitting on the piazza, and when Vic ran up the steps, laughing, Will thought it was because she wished to make as light as possible of her danger.
"Now, Mary Victoria Hall," her father said, much to Will's surprise, "you've got to stop that sort of thing. I saw that little caper out in the boat, and I'm not going to have you playing such tricks on your cousin. You must look out for this girl, Will, as she is the worst tease in Florida. There is not a better sailor than she in all the Keys, and nothing could upset her unless she chose. Why, she sails that sharpie fifteen miles to school every day in winter, and she knows every rock and reef. She tipped you over purposely, to give you a ducking."
"Why, Uncle David—" Will interrupted.
"Nothing else," Mr. Hall went on; "and as to drowning, you might as well try to drown a duck. She swam out to the Alligator Light, twenty miles, when she was only twelve years old. She has been making game of you, that's all."
"You see," Vic's father continued, "she is left alone here so much, while I am away sponging and fishing, that I had to teach her to take care of herself. But I don't want her to be playing her pranks on you just because you live in a city and ain't used to girls who are good sailors and good rifle-shots."
Vic looked very meek while her father was talking, but Will saw that she was ready to laugh at any minute. When he went into the house to change his clothes he was almost ready to admit that his trip to the Keys was a dismal failure. That a crack football-player, an expert bicycler, a leader in all the sports in a big school in the greatest city in the country, should be outdone in everything by a little country girl who looked as meek as a lamb, and be the butt of her jokes, was enough to make him feel uncomfortable. Two days after Will's gallant rescue of his cousin from no danger at all, he and Vic were left alone. Their fathers had sailed for Cuba in the schooner, with eighty men and hundreds of cases of ammunition. If all went well, they would be back from Cuba the following night. But if all did not go well? The cousins knew that any slight mishap might bring trouble into both families, and they were unusually quiet.