Soma was a person that I
was beginning to cordially dislike.
I turned to Newmarch and fired a question at him.
"Do you think he was helped overboard?"
"Why, no," he said slowly. "Why do you think that?"
"Oh, nothing," I replied. "I thought his narrow escape of the morning
would have made him careful."
It was a few hours after this conversation that I had my first chance
of speaking to Edith Herndon since the moment we had run into the
disturbance. The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I
hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage
which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as
she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the
wind like the whips of invisible devils.
"Oh, Mr. Verslun, we are a wreck!" she cried.
"Not quite," I said, gripping her arm to steady her as _The Waif_ took
a header. "We've weathered the worst of it and we're still sound. The
storm centre has slipped away to the north, and we can count ourselves
out of the ruction for the present."
Her shapely hand clutched my wet oilskins as the yacht plunged from the
back of an enormous swell, and I was so busy noting the beauty of the
hand that I had no eye for the sallow face that peeped from the
companion.
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