Mrs. Somerville was almost unconscious, while her
husband knelt by her side and wrung his hands in abject misery.
Anything was better than to go back to that woful assembly, yet she
choked down a protest and said quietly:

"I am ready. I am afraid I have been a bother to you, Captain
Courtenay."

"Say, rather, you have given me hope. I think Heaven has work for you
to do in the world. Let me go out first. Never mind Joey. He can
struggle along behind. Steady now. Head down and lean well against
the wind."

Elsie found, to her amazement, that there was less sense of danger in
facing the wind than in being driven along before it. Moreover, she
had greater confidence during this second transit over the exposed
portion of the deck. She felt Courtenay dragging her on irresistibly
until they gained the lee of the smoking-room. He let her rest there,
beneath the ladder leading to the bridge. Then a strange revulsion of
feeling came to him. He experienced an overwhelming desire not to be
parted from her; he had a sickening fear that he might never see her
again; so he shouted, very close to her cheek:

"Would you like to sit in my cabin a little while, if I bring Miss
Baring?"

She thought that would be splendid. Courtenay, if any one, would
succeed in calming Isobel. In order to make herself heard she, in
turn, had to put her lips quite near to Courtenay's face.

"Yes," she cried, "I shall be only too pleased. But be patient with
her; she is very frightened."

There is no accounting for the workings of a man's mind. Courtenay, at
no time a lady's man, most certainly had other matters to attend to
just then. Yet here he was thinking only of a woman's comfort. His
dismal forebodings were banished by a rush of absurd delight at the
thought that he would have an opportunity of speaking to her
occasionally. What a brave girl she was! What a wife for a sailor!
In truth, these were mad notions that jostled in his brain when his
life and her's were not worth an hour's purchase. He drew her to the
foot of the ladder.

"Run ahead, Joey!" he cried. The dog, a weird little figure leaning
forward at a ridiculous angle against the tearing wind, obeyed
instantly. "Now, you," he said to Elsie, "but wait until I pass you at
the top."

Though her skirts were troublesome, she managed the ascent. Then she
was taken off her feet again, and hardly knew where she was until she
found herself in the haven of Court