"If we could only work out one of those long joists it would make a
little show." Captain Mayo shoved his arm down the hole again. "But they
are wedged across too solidly."
"I think there's a piece of lumber floating over there," cried the girl.
She was clinging to one of the wedges, and the composure which she felt,
or had assumed, stirred Mayo's admiration. The plump hand which she held
against her forehead to shield her eyes did not tremble. From the little
Dutch cap, under the edge of which stray locks peeped, down over her
attire to her toes, she seemed to be still trim and trig, in spite of
her experiences below in the darkness and the wet. With a sort of mild
interest in her, he reflected that her up-country beau would be very
properly proud of her if he could see her there on that schooner's keel.
"What a picture you would make, Miss Candage, just as you are!" he
blurted. She took down her hand, and the look she gave him did not
encourage compliments. "Just as you are, and call it 'The Wreck,'"
he added.
"Do I look as badly as all that, Captain Mayo?"
"You look--" he expostulated, and hesitated, for her gaze was distinctly
not reassuring.
"Don't tell me, please, how I look. I'm thankful that I have no mirror.
Isn't that a piece of lumber?" she inquired, crisply, putting a stop on
further personalities. "Wait! It's down in a hollow just now."
The sea lifted it again immediately. Mayo saw that it was a long
strip of scantling, undoubtedly from the deckload that the Polly
had jettisoned when she was tripped. It lay to windward, and that fact
promised its recovery; but how was the tide? Mayo squinted at the sun,
did a moment's quick reckoning from the tide time of the day before, and
smiled.
"We'll get that, Miss Candage. She's coming this way."
Watching it, seeing it lift and sink, waiting for it, helped to pass the
time. Then at last it came alongside, and he crawled cautiously down the
curve of the bilge and secured it. After he had braced it in the hole
in the schooner's bottom with the help of Mr. Speed, the girl gave him a
crumpled wad of cloth when he turned from his task.
"It's the rest of my petticoat. You may as well have it," she explained,
a pretty touch of pink confusion in her cheeks.