He bolted it, too. Not if he could help it
would his charge come out on that storm-swept deck unattended.
The electric light glowed brightly in Elsie's cabin, exactly as she had
left it an hour ago. This was one of the anomalous conditions of the
disaster. It lent a queer sense of Midsummer madness to the night's
doings. In a few days it would be Christmas, the Christmas of sunshine
and flowers known only to that lesser portion of the habitable earth
south of the line. In Valparaiso the weather was stifling, yet here, not
so very far away, it was bitterly cold. And the ship was driving
headlong to destruction, though electric bells and switches were at
command in a luxuriously furnished apartment, while the engineer had just
spoken of the telephone as a means of conversing with the captain. Away
down in her feminine heart the girl wondered why Courtenay himself had
not come to her. Why had he sent Christobal first and Walker
subsequently? Oh, of course he had more urgent matters to attend to,
though, in the helpless condition of the ship, it was difficult to
appreciate their precise degrees of importance.
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