id, fell likewise. Pearl said
afterward she knew that had gone because it started playing there on the
floor at a great rate. And the next thing she knew she was in the parlor
herself; and such a mess! She didn't know as she ever wanted to lay eyes
on it again after that night's works.

Elmer, uncertain what part to play, walked along with the bed, still
carrying the hand lamp in his hand, to light the _Minnie Williams_
along, and dodging falling walls and plaster. He said when questioned by
Zinie Shadd that he hadn't felt any particular alarm, on account of the
deliberate way she had come poking in there, with a kind of a
root-hog-or-die look about her; and he said he never for a minute
doubted his ability and Pearl's to make good their escape if the worst
came to the worst.

It really wasn't until the parlor went, as he explained to the Tall
Stove Club, that he took it into his head to look over his shoulder; and
it was then that he saw the lifeboat sweeping on victoriously across the
kitchen, or what had been the kitchen. And on top of that he saw Hat
Tyler looking down as cool as a cucumber, and her husband standing
beside her.

"She had come on deck jest as she was," he stated at that time with a
quiet chuckle, "and I never see anything like so much interest showing
in a human countenance before."

Hat Tyler might well show interest; for after the house came the
land--and the land, well she knew it, was made of sterner stuff. A
shriek from Pearl told Elmer that his wife had found her tongue, as he
phrased it. The fact is she had caught sight of Hat Tyler standing over
her like an avenging fury.

But precisely at this moment the chain cable, which had all this time
lain lethargic on the floor of the harbor, roused itself link by link,
tautened, took a grip on the hook and snubbed the ship. None too soon,
it had run out to the bitter end.

Pearl Higgins' bed halted, the stove halted, and Elmer set down his
lamp. The boom receded. With the same swanlike ease she had used in
effecting an entrance, the _Minnie Williams_ floated out into the stream
again.

And in the very instant of that heaven-sent reversal Hat Tyler cried in
trumpet tones, "Travel yourself, and see how you like it!"

A shriek of demoniac laughter came on the heels of that. There were none
present to laugh with Hat, but that laugh of hers rang in Pearl Higgins'
ears like the last trump. She got herself over the side of the bed in
short order.