I knew what it was, of course. We had been talking of the possibility ever since we left the Mersey. However much we tried to keep the mind away from the subject, it came back to it, as a mischievous boy makes straight for the thing forbidden him.
My first thought was for the girl in the yashmak. I must find her, see she had a life-belt, and take her to her boat. Before I had scrambled to the door, however, it flew open, apparently of its own accord, while a wild nor’wester positively blew the young lady in.
It also blew away anything like Paolo-and-Francesca sentiment.
“Oh, here you are!” she exclaimed, breathlessly. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. They say we’ve sighted a periscope. Take this and put it on.”
Of the two life-belts she carried she flung one to me, beginning to fasten the other about herself.
“But the one you’ve brought me must belong to some one else,” I objected, as I aided her. “I’ve got one of my own in my cabin. I’ll just run down—”
She brushed this aside. “No; this is yours. I went and got it.”
“I’m a nurse—or a kind of one,” she said, hastily. “That’s what I’m here for.”
She helped me as a medieval lady might have helped her lord to buckle on his sword; and presently we were out on deck.
As we had twice already drilled in the unsightly things, we had lost the sense of the grotesque appearance presented by ourselves and our fellow-travelers. Besides, we were too eager to descry the periscope to have any more thought of ourselves than a wild duck of how it looks when skimming away from a sniper. Indeed, it was chiefly of a hunted wild duck that our zigzagging boat reminded me.
It was a sullen day, with that scudding of low, gray clouds which looks as if the heavens were hastening to some Armageddon of their own. The sea had hardly got over the swell left by one gale when it was being lashed into fury by another. The _Assiniboia_ pitched and rolled and tore through the waters like a monster goaded by innumerable stings. I should have found it next to impossible to struggle along the deck had my protectress not stood by and steadied me.
There was a kind of foolish pretense at the chivalrous in my tone as I said, “I’ll just see you to your boat before going over to mine.”