| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 1 | 20 | 41 | 61 | 81 |
|
www.freeclassicebooks.com
Chapter 2
Toward morning, I must have dozed, though it seemed to me at the time that I
had lain awake for days, instead of hours. When I finally opened my eyes, it was
daylight, and the girl's hair was in my face, and she was breathing normally. I
thanked God for that. She had turned her head during the night so that as I
opened my eyes I saw her face not an inch from mine, my lips almost touching
hers.
It was Nobs who finally awoke her. He got up, stretched, turned around a few
times and lay down again, and the girl opened her eyes and looked into mine.
Hers went very wide at first, and then slowly comprehension came to her, and she
smiled.
"You have been very good to me," she said, as I helped her to rise, though if the
truth were known I was more in need of assistance than she; the circulation all
along my left side seeming to be paralyzed entirely. "You have been very good to
me." And that was the only mention she ever made of it; yet I know that she was
thankful and that only reserve prevented her from referring to what, to say the
least, was an embarrassing situation, however unavoidable.
Shortly after daylight we saw smoke apparently coming straight toward us, and
after a time we made out the squat lines of a tug--one of those fearless exponents
of England's supremacy of the sea that tows sailing ships into French and
English ports. I stood up on a thwart and waved my soggy coat above my head.
Nobs stood upon another and barked. The girl sat at my feet straining her eyes
toward the deck of the oncoming boat. "They see us," she said at last. "There is a
man answering your signal." She was right. A lump came into my throat--for her
sake rather than for mine. She was saved, and none too soon. She could not
have lived through another night upon the Channel; she might not have lived
through the coming day.
The tug came close beside us, and a man on deck threw us a rope. Willing hands
dragged us to the deck, Nobs scrambling nimbly aboard without assistance. The
rough men were gentle as mothers with the girl. Plying us both with questions
they hustled her to the captain's cabin and me to the boiler-room. They told the
girl to take off her wet clothes and throw them outside the door that they might
be dried, and then to slip into the captain's bunk and get warm. They didn't have
to tell me to strip after I once got into the warmth of the boiler-room. In a jiffy,
my clothes hung about where they might dry most quickly, and I myself was
absorbing, through every pore, the welcome heat of the stifling compartment.
1
0
Page
Quick Jump
|