Part 64 (2/2)

”Not so full as it would if you hadn't brought up alongside,” said the old boatman.

”Do you want to frighten the lady?” replied the sailor, in his driest and least courtier-like way.

”I am not frightened, Mr. Dodd,” said Lucy. ”I was, but I am not now.”

”Come and help me get the water out of her, Jack. Stay! Miss Fountain had better step into the dry boat, meantime. Now, Jack, look alive; lash her longside aft.”

This done, the two sailors, one standing on the lugger's gunwale, one on the schooner's, handed Miss Fountain into the schooner, and gave her the cus.h.i.+ons of the lugger to sit upon. They then went to work with a will, and bailed half a ton of water out.

When she was dry David jumped back into his own boat. ”Now, Miss Fountain, your boat is dry, but the sea is getting up, and I think, if I were you, I would stay where you are.”

”I mean to,” said the lady, calmly. ”Mr. Talboys, _would_ you mind coming into this boat? We shall be safer here; it--it is larger.”

The gentleman thus addressed was embarra.s.sed between two mortifications, one on each side him. If he came into David's boat he would be second fiddle, he who had gone out of port first fiddle. If he stuck to the lugger Lucy would go off with Dodd, and he would look like a fool coming ash.o.r.e without her. He hesitated.

David got impatient. ”Come, sir,” he cried, ”don't you hear the lady invite you? and every moment is precious.” And he held out his hand to him.

Talboys decided on taking it, and he even unbent so far as to jump vigorously--so vigorously that, David pulling him with force at the same moment, he came flying into the schooner like a cannon-ball, and, toppling over on his heels, went down on the seat with his head resting on the weather gunwale, and his legs at a right angle with his back.

”That is one way of boarding a craft,” muttered David, a little discontentedly; then to the old boatman: ”Here, fling us that tarpaulin. I say, here is more wind coming; are you sure you can work that lugger, you two?”

”We will be ash.o.r.e before you can, now there's n.o.body to bother us,”

was the prompt reply.

”Then cast loose; here we are, drifting out to sea.”

The old man cast the rope loose; David hauled it on board, and the schooner shot away from her companion and bore up north-north-west, leaving the luggar rocking from side to side on the rising waves. But the next minute Lucy saw her sail rise, and she bore up and stood northeast.

”Good-by to you, little horror,” said Lucy.

”We shall fall in with her a good many times more before we make the land,” said David Dodd.

Lucy inquired what he meant; but he had fallen to hauling the sheet aft and making the sail stand flatter, and did not answer her. Indeed, he seemed much more taken up with Jack than with her, and, above all, entirely absorbed in the business of sailing the boat.

She was a little mortified at this behavior, and held her tongue.

Talboys was sulky, and held his. It was a curious situation. In the hurry and bustle, none of the parties had realized it; but now, as the boat breasted the waves, and all was silent on board, they had time to review their position.

Talboys grew gloomier and gloomier at the poor figure he cut. Lucy kept blus.h.i.+ng at intervals as she reflected on the obligation she had laid herself under to a rejected lover. The rejected lover alone seemed to mind his business and nothing else; and, as he was almost ludicrously unconscious that he was doing a chivalrous action, a misfortune to which those who do these things are singularly liable, he did not gild the transaction with a single graceful speech, and permitted himself to be more occupied with the sails than with rescued beauty.

Succeeding events, however, explained, and in some degree excused, this commonplace behavior.

The next time they tacked some spray came flying in, and wetted all hands. Lucy laughed. The lugger had also tacked, and the two boats were now standing toward each other; when they met the lugger had weathered on them some sixty or seventy yards.

A furious rain now came on almost horizontally, and the sailors arranged the tarpaulin so as to protect Mr. Talboys and Miss Fountain.

”But you will be wet through yourself, Mr. Dodd. Will you not come under shelter too?”

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