However, he will soon explain matters to
you in person, as he is coming aft almost at once."
Elsie was disappointed. She dreaded the return to the saloon, with its
queerly assorted company. When she quitted them, they were in a state
of indescribable distress. Gray and the Englishman were helping the
chief steward to adjust life-belts; but Isobel was in a frenzy of
despair, her maid had fainted, de Poincilit and the Spaniards were
muttering alternate appeals to the saints and oaths of utter
abandonment, and 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.
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