"You shall have something warm to drink as soon as these hands can make it," she said, and as he heard her going forward he threw himself on the berth and buried his face in the pillow to smother the cry of anguish which his lips refused to stay.
Swiftly as Emily moved to her task, it took her longer than she had imagined it would to prepare something. The galley was in a litter of wreckage and the range was water-soaked where the sea had poured through the unprotected vent left by the swept-away stovepipe. When she returned aft again it was to awaken Paul from a doze. In the meantime he had succeeded in changing into the dry clothing she had laid out for him. He had also bandaged his ankles and wrists.
The gold woman brought tea and hardtack biscuits and a jar of marmalade.
"It was the best I could do quickly," she explained, raising the chart table and placing the things on it. The table had fallen some time during the night and the silver watch lay dashed in pieces on the door, its parts mingling with the internals of the barometer which had been torn from its fastenings. The sextant, undamaged, lay where it had been hurled on the starboard bench or berth opposite Paul.
"It's all right, partner," Paul said as Emily discovered the broken things. "Don't worry."
When it came to drinking his tea his hands could not hold the mug in which she was compelled to serve it. She gave it to him mouthful by mouthful. The hot drink was stimulating. There was satisfaction of hunger, too, in the biscuits and marmalade. She stopped feeding him and drank and ate something only when he closed his lips firmly and turned his face from her.
And all the while there was raging within him a battle against the impulse of his consuming love to take this wonderful innocent woman to his breast. Had he not won the right to tell her that he loved her? a voice within kept repeating, and always the specter of the past, armed with the resolution of silence he had formed two days before, cried: "No; unless you are a coward."
"I think I will sleep," Paul said presently, when Emily offered to rub and rebandage his ankles.
"Is it because you do not wish me to do it?"
"Why, no. Of course not."