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The Water Devil
by
“I think I should now have begun to lose my wits if it had not been for one thing, and that was the coming of Miss Minturn on deck. The moment I saw her lovely face I stiffened up wonderfully. ‘Sir,’ said she, ‘I would like to see the captain.’ ‘I am representing the captain, miss,’ I said, with a bow; ‘what is it that I can do for you?’ ‘I want to speak to him about the steward,’ she said; ‘I think he is neglecting his duty.’ ‘I also represent the steward,’ I replied; ‘tell me what you wish of him.’ She made no answer to this, but looked about her in a startled way. ‘Where are all the men?’ she said. ‘Miss Minturn, ‘said I, ‘I represent the crew–in fact, I represent the whole ship’s company except the cook, and his place must be taken by your maid.’ ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, looking at me with her wide-opened, beautiful eyes.
“Then, as there was no help for it, I told her everything, except that I did not mention the Water-devil in connection with our marvellous stoppage. I only said that that was caused by something which nobody understood.
“She did not sit down and cover her head, nor did she scream or faint. She turned pale, but looked steadily at me, and her voice did not shake as she asked me what was to be done. ‘There is nothing to be done,’ I answered, ‘but to keep up good hearts, eat three meals a day, and wait until a ship comes along and takes us off.’
“She stood silent for about three minutes. ‘I think,’ she then said, ‘that I will not yet tell my father what has happened’; and she went below.
“Now, strange to say, I walked up and down the deck with my hat cocked on one side and my hands in my pockets, feeling a great deal better. I did not like Water-devils any more than I did before, and I did not believe in this one any less than I did before, but, after all, there was some good about him. It seems odd, but the arm of this submarine monster, over a mile long for all that I knew, was a bond of union between the lovely Miss Minturn and me. She was a lady; I was a marine. So far as I knew anything about bonds of union, there wasn’t one that could have tackled itself to us two, except this long, slippery arm of the Water-devil, with one end in the monstrous flob at the bottom, and the other fast to our ship.
“There was no doubt about it, if it hadn’t been for that Water-devil she would have been no more to me than the Queen of Madagascar was; but under the circumstances, if I wasn’t everything to her, who could be anything–that is, if one looked at the matter from a practical point of view?”
The blacksmith made a little movement of impatience. “Suppose you cut all that,” said he. “I don’t care about the bond of union; I want to know what happened to the ship.”
“It is likely,” said the marine, “if I could have cut the bond of union that I spoke of, that is to say, the Water-devil’s arm, that I would have done it, hoping that I might safely float off somewhere with Miss Minturn; but I couldn’t cut it then, and I can’t cut it now. That bond is part of my story, and it must all go on together.
“I now set myself to work to do what I thought ought to be done under the circumstances, but, of course, that wasn’t very much. I hoisted a flag upside down, and after considering the matter I concluded to take in all the sails that had been set. I thought that a steamer without smoke coming from her funnel, and no sails set, would be more likely to attract attention from distant vessels than if she appeared to be under sail.