Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 67

At which sly hit David was pleased, and burst into a loud, boisterous laugh.

Lucy put her hands to her ears. "Oh, don't! don't! this is worse than your blasphemies--laughing on the brink of eternity; these are not men--they are devils."

"Do you hear that, Jack? Come, you behave!" roared David.

A faint snarl from Talboys. The water had penetrated him, and roused him from a state of sick torpor; he lay in a tidy little pool some eight inches deep.

The boat was bailed and lightened, but Lucy's fears were not set at rest. What was to hinder the recurrence of the same danger, and with more fatal effect? She timidly asked David's permission to let her keep the sea out. Instead of snubbing her as she expected, David consented with a sort of paternal benevolence tinged with incredulity.

She then developed her plan; it was, that David, Jack, and she should sit in a triangle, and hold the tarpaulin out to windward and fence the ocean out. Jack, being summoned aft to council, burst into a hoa.r.s.e laugh; but David checked him.

"There is more in it than you see, Jack--more than she sees, perhaps.

My only doubt is whether it is possible; but you can try."

Lucy and Jack then tried to get the tarpaulin out to windward; instead of which, it carried them to leeward by the force of the wind. The mast brought them up, or Heaven knows where their new invention would have taken them. With infinite difficulty they got it down and kneeled upon it, and even then it struggled. But Lucy would not be defeated; she made Jack gather it up in the middle, and roll it first to the right, then to the left, till it became a solid roll with two narrow open edges. They then carried it abaft, and lowered it vertically over the stern-port; then suddenly turned it round, and sat down. "Crack!"

the wind opened it, and wrapped it round the boat and the trio.

"Hallo!" cried David, "it is foul of the rudder;" and, he whipped out his knife and made a slit in the stuff. It now clung like a blister.

"There, Mr. Dodd, will not that keep the sea out?" asked Lucy, triumphantly.

"At any rate, it may help to keep us ahead of the sea. Why, Jack, I seem to feel it lift her; it is as good as a mizzen."

"But, oh, Mr. Dodd, there is another danger. We may broach to."

"How can she broach to when I am at the helm? Here is the arm that won't let her broach to."

"Then I feel safe."

"You are as safe as on your own sofa; it is the discomfort you are put to that worries me."

"Don't think so meanly of me, Mr. Dodd. If it was not for my cowardice, I should enjoy this voyage far more than the luxurious ease you think so dear to me. I despise it."

"Mr. Dodd, now I am no longer afraid. I am, oh, so sleepy."

"No wonder--go to sleep. It is the best thing you can do."

"Thank you, sir. I am aware my conversation is not very interesting."

Having administered this sudden bloodless scratch, to show that, at sea or ash.o.r.e, in fair weather or foul, she retained her s.e.x, Lucy disposed herself to sleep.

David, steering the boat with his left hand, arranged the cus.h.i.+on with his right. She settled herself to sleep, for an irresistible drowsiness had followed the many hours of excitement she had gone through. Twice the heavy plunging sea brought her into light contact with David. She instantly awoke, and apologized to him with gentle dismay for taking so audacious a liberty with that great man, commander of the vessel; the third time she said nothing, a sure sign she was unconscious.

Then David, for fear she might hurt herself, curled his arm around her, and let her head decline upon his shoulder. Her bonnet fell off; he put it reverently on the other side the helm. The air now cleared, but the gale increased rather than diminished. And now the moon rose large and bright. The boat and masts stood out like white stone-work against the flint-colored sky, and the silver light played on Lucy's face. There she lay, all unconscious of her posture, on the man's shoulder who loved her, and whom she had refused; her head thrown back in sweet helplessness, her rich hair streaming over David's shoulder, her eyes closed, but the long, lovely lashes meeting so that the double fringe was as speaking as most eyes, and her lips half open in an innocent smile. The storm was no storm to her now. She slept the sleep of childhood, of innocence and peace; and David gazed and gazed on her, and joy and tenderness almost more than human thrilled through him, and the storm was no storm to him either; he forgot the past, despised the future, and in the delirium of his joy blessed the sea and the wind, and wished for nothing but, instead of the Channel, a boundless ocean, and to sail upon it thus, her bosom tenderly grazing him, and her lovely head resting on his shoulder, for ever, and ever, and ever.

Thus they sailed on two hours and more, and Jack now began to nod.

All of a sudden Lucy awoke, and, opening her eyes, surprised David gazing at her with tenderness unspeakable. Awaking possessed with the notion that she was sleeping at home on a bed of down, she looked dumfounded an instant; but David's eyes soon sent the blood into her cheek. Her whole supple person turned eel-like, and she glided quickly, but not the least bruskly, from him; the latter might have seemed discourteous.

"Oh, Mr. Dodd," she cried, "what am I doing?"

"You have been getting a nice sleep, thank Heaven."

"Yes, and making use of you even in my sleep; but we all impose on your goodness."

"Why did you awake? You were happy; you felt no care, and I was happy seeing you so."

Lucy's eyes filled. "Kind, true friend," she murmured, "how can I ever thank you as I ought? I little deserved that you should watch over my safety as you have done, and, alas! risk your own. Any other but you would have borne me malice, and let me perish, and said, 'It serves her right.'"

"Malice! Miss Lucy. What for, in Heaven's name?"

"For--for the affront I put upon you; for the--the honor I declined."

"Hate cannot lie alongside love in a true heart."

"I see it cannot in a n.o.ble one. And then you are so generous. You have never once recurred to that unfortunate topic; yet you have gained a right to request me--to reconsider--Mr. Dodd, you have saved my life!!"

"What! do you praise me because I don't take a mean advantage? That would not be behaving like a man."

"I don't know that. You overrate your s.e.x--and mine. We don't deserve such generosity. The proof is, we reward those who are not so--delicate."

"I don't trouble my head about your s.e.x. They are nothing to me, and never will be. If you think I have done my duty like a man, and as much like a gentleman as my homely education permits, that is enough for me, and I shall sail for China as happy as anything on earth can make me now."

Lucy answered this by crying gently, silently, tenderly.

"Don't ye cry. Have I said something to vex you?"

"Oh no, no."

"Are you alarmed still?"

"Oh, no; I have such faith in you."

"Then go to sleep again, like a lamb."

"I will; then I shall not tease you with my conversation."

"Now there is a way to put it."

"Forgive me."

"That I will, if you will take some repose. There, I will lash you to my arm with this handkerchief; then you can lie the other way, and hold on by the handkerchief--there."

She closed her eyes and fell apparently to sleep, but really to thinking.

Then David nudged Jack, and waked him. "Speak low now, Jack."

"What is it, sir?"