"Haul her up three points," said Paul, facing the wheel. "Keep an eye on me. Every time I raise my right hand let her go off half a point. When I hold up my left: Haul up half a point—luff!"
With this instruction snapped at Emily, Paul ran forward, leaving her alone, bewildered, fearful of making a mistake. But he was satisfied she would understand. He held responsibility to be as much the mother of capacity as necessity is of invention.
By instinct alone Emily interpreted Paul's orders. She brought the Daphne to windward and until she could see the boat and its passenger's head just over the lee bow. She saw Paul spring into the fore shrouds with a coil of rope. As he did so he raised his left hand. The boat disappeared. She was sure the Daphne would run it down. Paul raised his right hand. The helmswoman let the bark go off half a point.
Paul, leaning over the rail at his last signal, tried to read a name on the stern of the little boat which came bobbing toward him. He failed.
An old man was standing up between the cockleshell's alter and second thwarts. He was babbling in delirium. His swollen tongue was protruding from his lips. He was bareheaded and his hairless crown seemed ready to burst open in fire. Now the boat was close enough to see that the derelict was alone. His clothing consisted of a shirt and trousers—dungarees. He answered Paul's hails with a leer of idiocy.
Emily steered so finely that the Daphne brought the boat alongside just abreast of the fore-rigging. As their sides touched, Paul dropped a running bowline over the old man's head and shoulders and a minute later hauled him over the side. The boat overturned as its occupant was jerked out of it and Paul regretfully saw it drift away.
The derelict crumpled in a heap at his rescuer's feet as he touched the deck. His face and neck and arms and feet were horribly sunburned. He was literally parboiled. It would have taken the woman who mothered him to recognize his pitiably swollen countenance. He was short and thick-set and between fifty-five and sixty years old. His horny nails and blunt work-worn fingers bespoke him a sailor.
Paul carried him up on the poop as the best place to work over him and laid him down in the lee of the lounge house.
"Oh, you poor, poor man!" Emily cried in sympathy at sight of him.
"This is terrible, little woman. I'm afraid we can do little for him."