"It cannot last much longer, my darling," I said; "the gale is fast blowing itself out, and then we shall have blue skies and smooth water again."
"Can we not land, Herbert?" she asked feebly in my ear, with her cheek upon my shoulder.
"Would to Heaven that were possible within the next five minutes!" I answered.
"Whereabouts are we?"
"I cannot tell exactly; but when this weather breaks we shall find the English coast within easy reach."
"Oh, do not let us wait until we get to Mount's Bay!" she cried.
"My pet, the nearest port will be our port now, depend upon it."
This sort of talk making me feel most wretchedly and miserably hopeless, I got away from the subject by asking her how she felt, and by reassuring her as to the buoyancy of the yacht, and I then coaxed her into taking a little weak brandy and water, which, as a tonic under the circumstances, was the best medicine I could have given her. I afterwards made her lie down again, and procured Eau de Cologne and another pillow, and such matters, but at a heavy cost to my bones; for had I been imprisoned in a cask, and sent in that posture on a tour down a mountain's side, I could not have been more abominably thumped and belaboured. It was one wild scramble and flounder from beginning to end, blows on the head, blows on the shins, complete capsisals that left me sitting and dazed; and when my business of attending upon her was at an end, I felt that this little passage of my elopement had qualified me for nothing so much as for a hospital.
The day passed; a day of ceaseless storm, and of such tossing as only a smacksman, who has fished in the North Sea in winter, could know anything about. The spells at the pump grew frequent as the hours progressed, and the wearisome beat of the plied break affected my imagination as though it were the tolling of our funeral bell. I hardly required Caudel to tell me the condition of the yacht when, sometime between eight and nine o'clock that night, he put his head into the hatch and motioned me to ascend.
"It's my duty to tell ye, Mr. Barclay," he exclaimed, whispering hoarsely into my ear, in the comparative shelter of the companion cover, that Grace might not overhear him, "that the leak's againing upon us."