Maid of the Mist Part 23

"Perhaps you can make shift to drink it out of the pannikin. You see----"

"What a very odd ship--to have no spoons!" she took a sip of the soup and screwed up her lips. "Would you get me some salt, if you please?

This soup----"

"I'm sorry, but we have no salt either. You see----"

"No salt?" and she shot another quick amazed look at him. "Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" at which Wulfrey p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. "Whatever kind of a ship--you did say a ship, did you not? Where is it going to?"

"It's not going anywhere. You see, it's practically a stranded ship though it's really afloat----"

She put her hand to her forehead and rubbed it gently, and then clasped it tightly, with her thumb at one temple and her fingers at the other.

"I think my head is swimming yet," she said simply. "I cannot follow what you say."

"You'll understand as soon as you get on deck. This ship is bottled up inside a lake on an island. It has been here for probably thirty or forty years----"

"And you--have you been here all that time?"

"No, we were wrecked as you were, I suppose, on the banks out there.

We managed to get ash.o.r.e and found this ship to live on."

"Who are 'we'?"

"The mate of the ship and myself. We were the only ones saved. It was he saw you in the water and went in after you and brought you ash.o.r.e."

"It was good of him. I will thank him. Where is he?"

"He's out at the wreckage trying to find you some clothes."

"He is a good man.... How long have you been here?"

"About three months."

"And no one has come to you in all that time?"

"You are the first. Now"--as she finished the soup--"take a good drink of this,"--some weak rum and water warmed up in another pannikin, over which she choked and coughed and wrinkled up her pretty nose distastefully. "Then you will go to sleep again, and in the morning I hope you will be all right."

"But there is so much I would like to know----"

"When you have had another long sleep. Are you quite warm?"

"Quite. That horrid stuff was like fire."

"You were cold enough when we found you. In fact we believed you were dead."

She shivered and nestled down among the blankets with a wave of colour in her face.

"I will sleep," she said quietly, and the Doctor left her to herself.

XXVI

It was almost dark before the mate pitched his cargo up on to the deck and came groping up the side after it.

"What luck?" asked Wulfrey, as he came up to help him.

"Brought all I could lay hands on, but I wouldn't like to say they're right kind of things."

"She'll be glad of them whatever they are."

"Has she come round?"

"I wakened her to take some soup and biscuit. Now I hope she will sleep till morning."

"And you told her it was me brought her ash.o.r.e?"

"Yes, I told her that. She will thank you herself."

"Did you find out who she is and where she hails from?"

"Not yet. There'll be time enough to learn all that. My only desire was to get some nourishment inside her. She'll be building up now all the time she's sleeping."

"An' she's a good-looking bit of goods, eh?" asked the mate, as they sat eating.

"Very good-looking, I should say, and pulling round quickly. A gentlewoman without doubt."

"And how can ye tell that now? There's many a good-looking hussy that's not gentle-born."

"Undoubtedly," said Wulfrey, looking across the fire at him. "But this isn't one of that kind. She's a lady to the finger-tips."

"Ah--too fine a lady to live on a ship with the likes o' you and me, mebbe," growled the mate. "All same, if't 'adn't bin for me her leddyship ud be no more'n a little white corp tumbling about out yonder in its little white shift."

"Quite so," said Wulfrey, on whom this insistence on his sole claim to the salvaging of her was beginning to pall. "And if it hadn't been for me your bringing her ash.o.r.e wouldn't have been of much service to her.

So suppose we say no more about it. We'll divide the honours."

"If I hadn't brought her ash.o.r.e ye couldn't have brought her round,"

growled the mate.

"Six of one and half a dozen of the other."

"No six of anything. Ye can't deny I brought her ash.o.r.e."

Wulfrey lit his pipe and went up on deck, wondering what was working in the curious fellow's brain now.

When he went down again he found that Macro had opened his bundles and spread their contents out to dry, and had turned in. He just glanced at the varied a.s.sortment, and then, not to disturb his patient by going anywhere near her, spread some blankets in the room next to the mate's, and turned in himself. But he lay awake for a long time, wondering if the introduction of this new element into the limited circle of their lives was like to make for peace or otherwise.