learned afterward that he wasn't dead and that when Bonnie Bell
reaches in and grabs him by the collar she tells him to keep still or
she'll soak him over the head with the boat hook.

"We'll be in in a minute," says she to him. Of course I didn't know that
then.

It seems like she didn't try to haul him plumb in, the waves running so
high; and she run the engine with one hand and held on to him with the
other, him dragging along at one side of the boat and getting a mouthful
of water every once in a while. It wasn't very far off from our dock and
pretty soon they come alongside.

"Grab him, Curly!" says she; so I grabbed him when she swung in and
hauled him up.

He was wet all over and at first he seemed half mad. I seen who he was
then--he was the Wisner's hired man.

"Why didn't you let me alone?" says he. "I'd 'a' got her all right
pretty soon. You might have gone over too."

"What?" says she, scornful. "You're all right anyways, and you got no
kick coming."

She stood up in her bathing clothes, wet as she could be, and part of
her hair hanging down underneath her cap, and he looked at her kind of
humble. And says he: "I thank you very much. Pardon me for what I
said." Then he looks down at his clothes and seen they was wet, and he
broke out laughing. "All to the candy!" says he. "My life saved for my
country!" says he.

"There wasn't no sense in your going over," says Bonnie Bell, scolding
him. "You was getting your mixture too rich and you clogged up your
engine. You can't overfeed them two-cycles that way and get away with
it."

"That wasn't the trouble at all," says he. "I caught my foot in the
ignition wire and broke it off. Of course she couldn't run then; but I
could of swum in from where I was and the boat would have drifted in."

"You would have got good and wet swimming in," says she, still scornful,
"and you would have got pounded to pieces against the sea wall; that's
what would have happened to you. Some folks," says she, "ain't fit to go
out alone anyways."

And, so saying, she leaves us both, wet as she was in her bathing
clothes, and runs on through the boathouse and up the steps. He stood
looking after her, sober.

"Don't I know that!" says he, turning to me. "If it hadn't been for her
it would have been all day with me. But I certainly thought she'd be
over."

"It's a good thing Bonnie Bell could run that boat," says I.

"Bonnie Bell?" says he. "Is that her name? By Jove! Well no