ad followed bravely in their wake, and was now a few steps down the
stairs, crept back, awed.

"At least, let me ask Dr. Christobal if you may come. You will be
quite safe here if you grip the rail. Even if a sea breaks over the
hatch it cannot touch you. May I leave you? And do you mind holding
Joey?"

Elsie detected a return to his earlier manner, and she was grateful to
him for it. She did not like him so well when he was stern and curt.

"Yes," she said. "That is only reasonable; but please tell him I shall
not be in the way, I know that there are wounded men to be attended,
and dead men down there, too. I shall not scream or faint, believe me."

"I am sure of that. Not one woman in a thousand could have played and
sung to cheer others, as you did after the accident happened."

It might have been the reaction from her exciting passage along the
deck, but Elsie experienced a sudden warm glow in her face. Somehow,
it was delightful to hear those words from such a man in the hour of
his supremest trial. For she realized what it meant to him, even
though his life were saved, if the _Kansas_ became a wreck.

She stooped, ostensibly to grasp the dog's collar.

"Before you leave me," she said, "let me tell you how sorry I am for
you."

He ran down the stairs, and entered the small saloon, which had been
hastily converted into a hospital. Perhaps it would be better
described as a mortuary, for it held more dead than living.
Christobal, aided by two sailors, was wrapping lint round a fireman's
seared arm. Happily, there was an abundance of cotton sheets
available, and the men tore them into strips. But the comparatively
small supply of cotton wool carried in the ship's stores, and in the
doctor's private medicine chest had long since given out.

"Miss Maxwell is here. She asked me to bring her to you in case she
might be able to render you some assistance," explained Courtenay.

Christobal drew himself upright, with the slowness of an elderly man
whose joints are stiffening.

"Miss Maxwell here?" he repeated, obviously surprised, if not
displeased. He waved a hand towards the men laid on mattresses on the
deck. Most were quite motionless; others writhed in agony. "She
cannot come--it is impossible."

"It is her wish."

"Quite impossible. Where is she?"

"Standing in the companion."

Courtenay saw that the girl could do no good now in that chamber of
death; the mere memory of it would be a