not quite so bold. She had been caught by the tide, which, first peering
over the rim of that extended flat, had then shot forth a frothy tongue,
and in a twinkling lapped her up.

Jethro presently brought up the webs of his two thumbs hard at her
armpits, and took her into his boat, dripping.

"She's not so plump as she was ashore," he said to himself with a vague
astonishment. She was as lean as a man at the hips, and finned away like
a mermaid, as became a daughter of the Old Roke.

"Steady now, my girl--. Heave and away."

There they stood confronting each other. Enraptured, life given into her
hand again, Cad Sills flung her arms about his neck and kissed him--a
moist, full-budded, passionate, and salty kiss. Even on the edge of
doom, it was plain, she would not be able to modulate, tone, or contain
these kisses, each of which launched a fiery barb into the recipient's
bosom.

The little fisherman had not known what elemental thing was in a kiss
before. He bit his lip and fell back slowly. Then, after a second's vain
reflection, he seized the butts of his oars, which had begun to knock
together. Caddie Sills sank across a thwart and shivered a little to
mark the crowding together of white horses at the very place where she
had stood. Contrary currents caused the tide to horse in strongly over
Pull-an'-be-Damned.

"What a ninny!" she whispered. "Was I sick with love, I wonder?"

The harbor master answered with the motion of his oars.

She glanced at him shrewdly, then struck her hands together at her
breast, which she caused to rise and fall stormily. She was, in fact, a
storm petrel in the guise of woman.

"You have saved my life," she cried out, "when not another man in all
this world would have lifted so much as his little finger. Do what you
will with me after this. Let me be your slave, your dog--. I am a lost
woman if you will not take pity on me."

Rackby's heart came into his throat with the slow surge of a sculpin on
a hook.

"Nothing--. Nothing at all. Nothing in the world. I happened along--.
Just a happen so."

The girl stood up, looked at him long and long, cried, "Thank you for
nothing, then, Mr. Happen-so," and from the humility of gratitude she
went to the extreme of impudence, and laughed in his face--a ringing,
brazen laugh, with the wild sweetness in it which he had noted in the
song she sang on that November hillside.

"You're a caution, little man, you're a caution," she said,