“You saw I had been crying. I am more than sorry to have exposed my weakness to you. I was lonely and—and you did not wish me here. Is it so very wrong?”
“I was only thinking of your comfort.”
“Did you imagine it greater down there? And you said you were thinking of the proprieties and—and Maxwell.”
“Of Maxwell—incidentally only.”
She made no answer to this. I had hoped she would, for now I was as ready to talk of our peculiar situation as before I had been unwilling. But the small hours of the morning are not conducive to discussion. The girl was fagged out and silent in consequence. Once or twice she nodded, but refused to go below, though I urged her to get out of the cold. I finally prevailed on her to put on my coat, and then we sat in silence. But Nature asserted herself at last, and she unconsciously but gradually drooped toward me until her head touched my shoulder, and there it settled. I brought half of the blanket about her and passed my arm around her waist that she might not pitch forward to the deck.
And in this fashion we remained, I with the tiller in the hollow of my left arm, and she in a heavy slumber, her face close to mine. I sat thus, immovable, until I was as sore and uncomfortable as though in bonds, but I may as well confess that I felt repaid for all I had undergone and was then undergoing through my self-enforced rigidity. I lost all sense of drowsiness and was never more wide awake in my life than when I determined to take advantage of the cursed force of circumstance and keep her by me as a right. I would use the argument placed in my power, which argument was the force of circumstance itself. I had been a coward long enough.
The time went easily. The girl slept as quietly as a child, oblivious of all the world. My own mind undoubtedly strayed from purely practical matters, but I was suddenly brought to my senses by the sight of a red and a green light, topped by a white one, bearing directly down upon us. The vessel with the night signals was almost into us before I realized its approach. If the pilot of the oncoming tug—for as such I recognized her—had been no more attentive than I, we should be a wreck in less than thirty seconds, and with no blame to him, as we carried no light. Rudely awakening the girl I put the helm up and shouted with all my power.
The black mass forged on until within two lengths of us. I heard the powerful throbbing of her engine, the tearing hiss and splash from her cut-water, and the churning of the propeller. In an instant more I would hear the crashing of timbers, but as I strained my eyes on the oncoming boat and threw my arm around the girl, ready for the worst, I saw the shadow of a man as he ran from the engine-room to the wheel, and then the tug suddenly swerved and passed us so close that I could have touched her rail! In an instant she had slid by and then I leaped up and shouted like one possessed:
“Come to! Come to, for God’s sake! We are in distress!”
There was a hoarse answer and the vessel sank into the darkness. I thought we were to be abandoned and for an instant felt all the deep hopelessness of a shipwrecked mariner in mid-ocean as he marks the loss of a possible rescue. But presently I saw the green starboard light reappear and knew, when the red light joined it, they were working to return to us. There was the clang of a gong, a quick churning of the reversed wheel, and the tug slowed up close at hand, keeping way gently until it bumped against the sloop and a man leaped from its deck to ours.