Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/61

Rh "But we must find the girl," I said. "She can't be left to drown."

"I don't think it would matter much," said he, getting over the side of the boat with his awkward load. "She would be of about as much use drowned as any other way. If it hadn't been for that hole she cut in the side of the boat, this would never have happened."

"You don't think it was that!" I said, holding the picture and the chair while he let himself down to the gang-plank.

"Yes, it was," he replied. "The tide's very high, and the water got over that hole and rushed in. The water and the wind will finish this old craft before very long."

And then he took his load from me and dashed down the gang-plank. I went below to look for Pomona. The lantern still hung on the nail, and I took it down and went into the kitchen. There was Pomona, dressed, and with her hat on, quietly packing some things in a basket.

"Come, hurry out of this," I cried. "Don't you know that this house—this boat, I mean, is a wreck?"

"Yes, sma'am—sir, I mean—I know it, and I suppose we shall soon be at the mercy of the waves."

"Well, then, go as quickly as you can. What are you putting in that basket?"

"Food," she said. "We may need it."

I took her by the shoulder and hurried her on deck, over the bulwark, down the gang-plank, and so on to the place where I had left Euphemia.

I found the dear girl there, quiet and collected, all up in a little bunch, to shield herself from the wind. I wasted no time, but hurried the two women over to the house of our milk-merchant. There, with