Trade Wind by M. M. Kaye Page A

incredulously:‘It isn’t true. It can’t be. This is the Norah —”
    She stopped suddenly, and her right eye—the other had made contact with a bollard and was already too swollen to see out of—widened in horror. “Why—it must have have been your ship that ran us down. This ship!”
    “You mean who just missed running you down. That’s right. Though I have to admit that it was no thanks to us that we are not all providing food for the fishes at this moment That helmsman of yours is a hell of a smart seaman, and I’d like to meet him. He snatched his ship out of the way as neatly as be damned, with less than an inch to spare and without so much as scraping our paint Here’s to him!”
    He drained the pannikin, and setting it down, turned his attention to more practical matters: “I must get back on deck and you’d better get out of those clothes and between blankets. Think you can manage it?”
    “I—I’ll try,” shuddered Hero.
    The man laughed again, and said: “You won’t find it too difficult, for you left half you: clothes on a broken spar, and we cut your laces. You’d better take over my bunk: it doesn’t look as though I shall be needing it for some considerable time—if ever!”
    He jerked his chin in the direction of the narrow berth that occupied one wall of the cabin, and picking up a dripping oilskin, shrugged himself into it and went away; moving as easily as though the ship had been drifting in a flat calm instead of lurching violently to a howling hurricane.
    The door closed behind him and presently Hero dragged herself painfully out of the chair and discovered that the stranger had spoken no more than the truth on the subject of her clothes, for her dress was in shreds. The bodice hung loose to the waist with every button gone, and the laces of her stays had been cut Even so it required prodigious efforts to remove the tattered remains, and it was probably the brandy more than mere will-power that lent her the strength to do it, and, when the last sodden garment had fallen to the floor, to stagger across to the bunk and crawl under the blankets.
    She did not know how long she slept, but when she eventually awoke it was to find that someone had lit a curious oriental lamp of pierced bronze that swooped and swayed to the motion of the ship, throwing a scatter of dancing stars across the walls of the darkened cabin. Watching them, she had fallen asleep again, and then later on someone had lifted her head and given her water to drink. There had been a time, too, when the sun had been shining. But on each occasion she had fallen asleep again almost immediately, and when at last she awoke to full consciousness the lamp had again been lit.
    The same small gold spatters of light that she remembered seeing before were once again dancing across the walls and ceiling. But this time they moved to the measure of a slow and stately saraband, and no longer in the frenzied tarantella of the previous night.
    Hero lay still and watched them, and presently became aware that she could only see out of one eye. Touching the other one gingerly she found that it was not only swollen but exceedingly sore, and the discovery effectually banished the last traces of drowsiness and jolted her into full consciousness of where she was and how she had come there.
    Her first instinctive feeling was one of profound gratitude for being alive, and for several minutes it was enough to think only of that and to be thankful, since it was indeed, as the blond stranger had said, a miracle that she had survived: a chance in a million! And then she remembered Amelia Fullbright and Captain Thaddaeus, imagining her to be dead. Oh, poor Amelia! she would take it dreadfully to heart. But how surprised and delighted she would be when Hero reappeared safe and sound. Perhaps the Norah Crayne was already standing by, waiting until she awoke, for the gale appeared to have blown itself out at last and by now it might be possible to