aking 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."

I had guessed as much; yet this confirmation of my conjecture affected
me as violently as though I had had no previous suspicion of the state
of the yacht. I was thunderstruck, I felt the blood forsake my cheeks,
and for some moments I could not find my voice.

"You do not mean to tell me, Caudel, that the yacht is actually
_sinking_?"

"No, sir. But the pump'll have to be kept continually going if she's
to remain afloat. I'm afeer'd when the mast went over the side that a
blow from it started a butt, and the leak's growing worse and worse,
consequence of the working of the craft."

"Is it still thick?"

"As mud, sir."

"Why not fire the gun at intervals?" said I, referring to the little
brass cannon that stood mounted upon the quarter-deck.

"I'm afeered--" he paused with a melanch