In the moments of easement I made
progress. Yet I miscalculated. The foot of the broad stairway to the
chart-house rested on a cross-hall a dozen feet in length.
Over-confidence and an unusually violent antic of the _Elsinore_ caused
the disaster. She flung down to starboard with such suddenness and at
such a pitch that the flooring seemed to go out from under me and I
hustled helplessly down the incline. I missed a frantic clutch at the
newel-post, flung up my arm in time to save my face, and, most
fortunately, whirled half about, and, still falling, impacted with my
shoulder muscle-pad on Captain West's door.

Youth will have its way. So will a ship in a sea. And so will a hundred
and seventy pounds of a man. The beautiful hardwood door-panel
splintered, the latch fetched away, and I broke the nails of the four
fingers of my right hand in a futile grab at the flying door, marring the
polished surface with four parallel scratches. I kept right on, erupting
into Captain West's spacious room with the big brass bed.

Miss West, swathed in a woollen dressing-gown, her eyes heavy still with
sleep, her hair glorious and for the once ungroomed, clinging in the
doorway that gave entrance on the main cabin, met my startled gaze with
an equally startled gaze.

It was no time for apologies. I kept right on my mad way, caught the
foot stanchion, and was whipped around in half a circle flat upon Captain
West's brass bed.

Miss West was beginning to laugh.

"Come right in," she gurgled.

A score of retorts, all deliciously inadvisable, tickled my tongue, so I
said nothing, contenting myself with holding on with my left hand while I
nursed my stinging right hand under my arm-pit. Beyond her, across the
floor of the main cabin, I saw the steward in pursuit of Captain West's
Bible and a sheaf of Miss West's music. And as she gurgled and laughed
at me, beholding her in this intimacy of storm, the thought flashed
through my brain:

_She is a woman_. _She is desirable_.

Now did she sense this fleeting, unuttered flash of mine? I know not,
save that her laughter left her, and long conventional training asserted
itself as she said:

"I just knew everything was adrift in father's room. He hasn't been in
it all night. I could hear things rolling around . . . What is wrong?
Are you hurt?"

"Stubbed my fingers, that's all," I answered, looking at my broken nails
and standing gingerly upright.

"My, that _was_ a ro