you
wouldn't be uneasy. I'll stake my professional reputation on his
injuries being superficial. Quite enough to knock a man out, I grant.
But a physique of this sort can stand a tremendous amount of strain
without serious effect. Hand me that adhesive, will you, please?"

There was an air of unreality about the whole proceeding in MacRae's
mind. He wondered if he would presently wake up in his bunk opposite
Steve and find that he had been dreaming. Yet those voices, and the
hands that shifted him tenderly, and the pyjama coat that was slipped on
him at last, were not the stuff of dreams. No, the lights of the
_Arrow_, the smash of the collision, the tumbling seas which had flung
him against the rocks, the dead weight of Steve's body in his bleeding
arms, were not illusions.

He opened his eyes when they turned him on his back.

"Well, old man, how do you feel?" Betty's companion asked genially.

"All right," MacRae said briefly. He found that speech required effort.
His mind worked clearly enough, but his tongue was uncertain, his voice
low-pitched, husky. He turned his eyes on Betty. She tried to smile. But
her lips quivered in the attempt. MacRae looked at her curiously. But he
did not say anything. In the face of accomplished facts, words were
rather futile.

He closed his eyes again, only to get a mental picture of the _Arrow_
leaping at him out of the gloom, the thunder of the swells bursting
against the foot of the cliffs, of Steve lying on that ledge alone. But
nothing could harm Steve. Storm and cold and pain and loneliness were
nothing to him, now.

He heard Betty speak.

"Can we do anything more?"

"Um--no," the man answered. "Not for some time, anyway."

"Then I wish you would go back to the house and tell them," Betty said.
"They'll be worrying. I'll stay here."

"I suppose it would be as well," he agreed. "I'll come back."

"There's no need for either of you to stay here," MacRae said wearily.
"You've stopped the bleeding, and you can't do any more. Go home and go
to bed. I'm as well alone."

There was a brief interval of silence. MacRae heard footsteps crossing
the floor, receding, going down the steps. He opened his eyes. Betty
Gower sat on a low box by his bed, her hands in her lap, looking at him
wistfully. She leaned a little toward him.

"I'm awfully sorry," she whispered.

"So was the little boy who cut off his sister's thumb with the hatchet,"
MacRae muttered. "But that didn't hel