“Well,” said Dan, “we ought to be comfortable.  Now, Miss Howland, I think you ought to go to your cabin and get off those damp skirts.  I have got to take a look at the cargo, see what plans I can make to render us something else than a log on the sea, and nose about in the galley.”  He started.  “By George!  I had forgotten about food.  That’s rather important.”  He hastily left the cabin and started down the corridor, with the girl’s warning not to be long following him.

First he stopped in the carpenter’s room and secured the very thing he was looking for,—­an axe.  With this he broke down the door of the storeroom, which, as he had expected, was locked.  There were a barrel of flour, tins of beef and of soups and vegetables, condensed milk, and a number of preserve jars filled with coffee.

Taking one of the jars in which he saw the coffee was ground he poured out a cupful and drew some water from a cask.  Then going into the galley, he dug up a coffee-pot from the mass of cooking utensils which covered the floor, and proceeded to light a fire in the range.  It was soon roaring, and Dan had just mixed the coffee and water when Virginia appeared at the door.

For an instant Dan hardly recognized the girl in her trim blue skirt, white sailor waist, open at the throat, and a red leather belt with a great brass buckle.

“You have done well,” he said at length.  “I had no idea you would be so fortunate.”

“Yes, everything fits pretty well,” laughed the girl, “except that the skirt is a trifle short, but of course that doesn’t matter here.  That’s not the point, though.”  She gazed at him sternly.  “Who gave you permission to come in here and cook?”

As Dan looked at her in amazement she continued: 

“Now see here, Captain Merrithew, we might just as well face our situation.  This is no time for observance of the minor conventions or gallantry.  We are shipwrecked.  We are nothing more nor less than two human beings cast away on a derelict.  You are to regard me, not as Virginia Howland, helpless, dependent, to be waited upon and watched over, but as you would Ralph Oddington or any one else were he in my place—­as an assistant in the common cause of safety.  I am going to help you in every way I can, and I am going to begin by establishing myself as cook of this party from now on.  Please don’t imagine I can’t cook.  I attended a French culinary school for two seasons.  And now—­” she stepped into the galley and seized Dan by the sleeve, drawing him gently toward the door—­“won’t you please go so that I shall have elbow room—­this is such a tiny box of a place.  Please!”

Dan hesitated no longer.  Seizing his axe he left the galley and went forward.  The mainmast had snapped about six feet below the truck; of the other two masts nothing was left but the stumps.  He chopped away the wreckage hanging over the bow, including the bowsprit and foretopmast, and had made good progress in clearing away the forward deck when Virginia, standing in the doorway of the after cabin, called him.