“Oh, yes, I did,” she returned, confidently. “I haven’t been aboard this big ship long, have I?”
“Only since yesterday,” I admitted.
“That is what the nice captain told me,” she returned, as though satisfied.
“Then you’ve seen me just once before. When I brought you below yesterday.”
“But you took me out of the boat?”
“Yes.”
“And held me all the time we were getting here?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“I knew it,” she breathed, smiling up into my face again. “I knew it couldn’t be all just a dream.”
The captain had fixed a chair himself, with blankets and the like, in the shade of the afterhouse. There I laid her down and then, having no further orders, would have gone forward to my own place. But she clung to my hand.