He faced about quickly and looked into the eyes of Virginia Howland.  She was pale, but her face was brave.  “I had just come out on deck,” she said, “because somehow I was getting nervous—­I wanted to be—­to be near the Captain.”  She smiled.  “I heard you talking through the speaking-tube; I didn’t mean to listen—­pardon me; I couldn’t help it.  We’re in danger, then, are we?  Don’t hesitate to answer truthfully, Captain Merrithew.”

“Why,” replied Dan, “we—­steady there, Mr. Terry; you men at the wheel attend to your business.  Excuse me,” turning to the girl, “danger—­why, we’ve been in danger all the time; else I wouldn’t be up here.”

“You are evading,” said the girl, slowly.  “But perhaps you are right.  I can say I trust you, Captain—­we all do.  I want to tell you again how we all appreciate your—­what you have done—­putting the yacht straight and—­”

“I am doing it for myself as much as for you.  More, perhaps; who knows?”

The girl gazed intently at his square-cut, bronzed face.  Then she looked straight into his steel-gray eyes, peering hard ahead from under the flat peak of a cap he had picked up on the bridge.

“Yes,” she said, as though speaking to herself, “I think I know.”  Then she started with an involuntary gesture.

“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before, Captain Merrithew?  Yes, yes, I have.  Where could it have been?  Do you recall?”

“Yes,” was the simple reply.  “I recall.  It was about two years ago, at Norfolk, when you were at the coal docks on this yacht.”

Virginia flushed eagerly and was about to say something, when some flashing thought, perhaps a realizing sense of their relative positions, closed her lips.  “I remember very clearly now.”  She spoke quietly, then she closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them they were stern and hard.

“Captain Merrithew,” she said, as though to hasten from the subject, “I know we are in danger.  Your silence has said as much.  Yet the yacht seems to be going finely—­”

Dan made no reply.

“Do you think I am a coward?  Is that the reason you are silent?”

Dan made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.

“Well, Miss Howland, if you are not a coward, if you can keep what you know to yourself, listen:  We’re taking in a little water.  It’s a race between the yacht and the leak; the yacht ought to win out.  Now you know as much as I do.”

“I am not frightened; my curiosity is natural.  Is there a chance that the yacht may not get where you are taking her?”

“To the Assateague beach—­no, I don’t think there is—­if all goes well.”

“If all goes well!  Then there is a chance—­a chance we may—­”

“Oh, we’ll be all right.”  Dan was temperamentally straightforward and honest, and his assertions were uttered with a tentative inflection which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses of the girl.