Lucy  put  her  hands  to  her  ears.  "  Oh,  don't !  don't !
this  is  worse  than  your  blasphemies,  laughing  on  the
brink  of  eternity ;  these  are  not  men,  they  are  devils."

"Do  you  hear  that.  Jack  ?  Come,  you  behave ! "  roared
David.     -

A  faint  snarl  from  Talboys.  The  water  had  penetrated
him,  and  roused  him  from  a  state  of  sick  torpor.  He  lay
in  a  tidy  little  pool  some  eight  inches  deep.
*.  The  boat  was  baled  and  lightened;  but  Lucy's  fears
were  not  set  at  rest.  What  was  to  hinder  the  recurrence
of  the  same  danger,  and  with  more  fatal  effect?  She
timidly  asked  David's  permission  to  let  her  keep  the  sea


384  t,OVB  MB  LITTLE,   LOVE  MB  LONG.
out.  Instead  of  snubbing  her,  as  she  expected,  David
consented  with  a  sort  of  paternal  benevolence  tinged
with  incredulity.  She  then  developed  her  plan :  it  was,
that  David,  Jack,  and  she,  should  sit  in  a  triangle,  and
hold  the  tarpaulin  out  to  windward,  and  fence  the  ocean
out.  Jack  being  summoned  aft  to  council,  burst  into  a
horse-laugh ;  but  David  checked  him.
