Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/172

 whispered, and before he knew it she had kissed him squarely and wonderfully upon his lips.

Then she sprang aboard her own boat, and remarked:

"I'll cast your lines off."

As good as her word, she let the lines go, one by one. He coiled them, under her low-voiced directions, and in a minute the pretty cabin-boat was clear. Before it floated clear, however, she dropped on her hands and knees, leaning over the four-inch high pipe railing around the motorboat's cabin and caught his hands in hers.

"Take care of yourself, will you? Don't trust anybody. And hide—hide all the way down the river. Be ready to shoot—and if Gost comes, don't wait; kill him! Promise me you'll kill him if he follows you?"

"Anything to please you, lady mine!" he whispered, gallantly. "Anything for another one of those—of those delicious"

"Sure!" she laughed under her breath, and this kiss was not all one sided, by any means. Then she whispered: "In January I'll meet you at Salem Landing, or down Spanish Moss Bend."

Then Delia released him, and the shantyboat floated out in the eddy, and past the sterns of the motorboat and of the Mahna shantyboat.