The Land That Time Forgot | Page 8

warm. Like a great light came the understanding of a means to warm the
girl. Immediately I knelt beside her to put my scheme into practice when suddenly I was
overwhelmed with embarrassment. Would she permit it, even if I could muster the
courage to suggest it? Then I saw her frame convulse, shudderingly, her muscles reacting
to her rapidly lowering temperature, and casting prudery to the winds, I threw myself
down beside her and took her in my arms, pressing her body close to mine.
She drew away suddenly, voicing a little cry of fright, and tried to push me from her.
"Forgive me," I managed to stammer. "It is the only way. You will die of exposure if you
are not warmed, and Nobs and I are the only means we can command for furnishing
warmth." And I held her tightly while I called Nobs and bade him lie down at her back.
The girl didn't struggle any more when she learned my purpose; but she gave two or three
little gasps, and then began to cry softly, burying her face on my arm, and thus she fell
asleep.


Chapter 2

Toward morning, I must have dozed, though it seemed to me at the time that I had lain
awake for days, instead of hours. When I finally opened my eyes, it was daylight, and the
girl's hair was in my face, and she was breathing normally. I thanked God for that. She
had turned her head during the night so that as I opened my eyes I saw her face not an
inch from mine, my lips almost touching hers.
It was Nobs who finally awoke her. He got up, stretched, turned around a few times and
lay down again, and the girl opened her eyes and looked into mine. Hers went very wide
at first, and then slowly comprehension came to her, and she smiled.

"You have been very good to me," she said, as I helped her to rise, though if the truth
were known I was more in need of assistance than she; the circulation all along my left
side seeming to be paralyzed entirely. "You have been very good to me." And that was
the only mention she ever made of it; yet I know that she was thankful and that only
reserve prevented her from referring to what, to say the least, was an embarrassing
situation, however unavoidable.
Shortly after daylight we saw smoke apparently coming straight toward us, and after a
time we made out the squat lines of a tug--one of those fearless exponents of England's
supremacy of the sea that tows sailing ships into French and English ports. I stood up on
a thwart and waved my soggy coat above my head. Nobs stood upon another and barked.
The girl sat at my feet straining her eyes toward the deck of the oncoming boat. "They
see us," she said at last. "There is a man answering your signal." She was right. A lump
came into my throat--for her sake rather than for mine. She was saved, and none too soon.
She could not have lived through another night upon the Channel; she might not have
lived through the coming day.
The tug came close beside us, and a man on deck threw us a rope. Willing hands dragged
us to the deck, Nobs scrambling nimbly aboard without assistance. The rough men were
gentle as mothers with the girl. Plying us both with questions they hustled her to the
captain's cabin and me to the boiler-room. They told the girl to take off her wet clothes
and throw them outside the door that they might be dried, and then to slip into the
captain's bunk and get warm. They didn't have to tell me to strip after I once got into the
warmth of the boiler-room. In a jiffy, my clothes hung about where they might dry most
quickly, and I myself was absorbing, through every pore, the welcome heat of the stifling
compartment. They brought us hot soup and coffee, and then those who were not on duty
sat around and helped me damn the Kaiser and his brood.
As soon as our clothes were dry, they bade us don them, as the chances were always
more than fair in those waters that we should run into trouble with the enemy, as I was
only too well aware. What with the warmth and the feeling of safety for the girl, and the
knowledge that a little rest and food would quickly overcome the effects of her
experiences of the past dismal hours, I was feeling more content than I had experienced
since those three whistle-blasts had shattered the peace of my world the previous
afternoon.
But peace