Sisters | Page 6

her gasp for breath. He was so carried away that he had to use both
arms, whereby a lurch of the boat nearly unseated him. "Never," he
declared, in an intense whisper--"never shall you come to harm, my
precious one, while you've got me to protect you; I can promise you
that."
"Dear," she returned, in the same kind of tone, "I know I never shall."
And she cuddled closer up to him, and he took a firmer grip of her.
There was no rail for either to hold to, and drawing out from the shelter
of the pier, and meeting the force of the southerly swell, the launch had
begun to dance like a cork on boiling water.
"Why, there's quite a sea on," remarked Guthrie, with a laugh. "I hope
it won't make you sea-sick."
"Sea-sick!" she echoed, with fine scorn. "I am a sailor's wife, sir."
"Bless your little heart, I've been sea-sick myself many a time, and for
not much more than this, either. However, it'll soon be over. There's
home waiting for us, Lil--"
"Where? Where?" she interrupted him, with a tender eagerness. The
launch was tossed high in the air, and the lights of Williamstown
stretched across the darkness in front of them like a band of jewels.
"Oh, you can't distinguish it," said Guthrie, "but it's there--it's one of
those lights; Mrs Hardacre said she was going to keep the blind up and
the gas flaring, so that we might see it as we came over."
"That's what I shall do when you come back next time," said the girl,
with a voice like a dove cooing. "Make a beacon to guide you home."

"No fear that I shall mistake the course, little woman."
He had an irresistible impulse to hug her with both arms again, and
they happened to be on the verge of the river current. Hardacre and
Finlayson both shouted, "Look out, sir!" but he was not looking out--
his sailor eyes were otherwise occupied, and so he did not perceive the
enemy of love making the spring to seize him. Just as he was folding
his mate to his breast, he heard the warning cry for'ard, and it was then
too late to avert the catastrophe. In the same instant a sudden wave
struck the launch, and nearly turned her over, and the young wife and
husband, holding to nothing but one another, and simply sitting upon
an unprotected plank, were tipped out as easily as balls from a capsized
basket.
"Oh, this is too absurd!"
That was Guthrie's mental ejaculation in the astonishing first moment.
A deep-sea sailor, who had come through what he had come through, to
let himself be caught unawares by such a paltry mischance as this!
Then, what an unspeakable ass to have been so careless--to have shown
himself incapable of protecting his wife, after all his boasts! Would he
ever hear the last of it as long as he lived? Poor little woman! How cold
the water felt when he thought of her tender skin. And her pretty dress,
that she had set such store by, in which she had intended to go to
church with him on Sunday--utterly destroyed, of course! Well, he
must make shift to afford her another and smarter one, and get it made
quickly. She should have her pick and choice. As the following wave
soused his uprising head, slapping him full in the face, so as to confuse
and blind him for a second or two, the fear that she might get "a dose of
it" before they could pull her out made him sharply anxious. If she got
a bad cold, a shock to her nerves, perhaps a serious illness, he would
never forgive himself. And what a sell that would be--what waste of
this precious holiday, this second honeymoon, so much sweeter than
the first--after the weary waiting for it!
He cleared his eyes, and had a momentary view of the surroundings
before another wave rushed upon him. Waves they were, by George!
He would not have believed it possible that such a sea would be

running right up here, in this little duck-pond of a bay. It had seemed
rough on the boat, but viewed from the surface, it might have been the
middle of Atlantic wastes. They were in the river channel--worse
luck!--and the south wind was dead on to it, bringing up the swell from
outside; and the swell, that had set that way for days, was so heavy as
to drive him back faster than his powerful limbs could propel him in
the other direction. At first the launch seemed to want to dance over
him, but when he rose on a swirl of water to take his bearings after the
first bewilderment,