“But that was last night,” he said, in a tone of raillery.  “I was tired, and you said so yourself, you know.  But I’m ready to talk now.  What shall I tell you?”

“Anything,” said the girl, with a laugh.

“What I am thinking of?” he said, with frankly admiring eyes.

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything.”  She stopped, and leaning forward, suddenly caught the brim of his soft felt hat, and drawing it down smartly over his audacious eyes, said, “Everything but that.”

It was with some difficulty and some greater embarrassment that he succeeded in getting his eyes free again.  When he did so, she had risen and entered the cabin.  Disconcerted as he was, he was relieved to see that her expression of amusement was unchanged.  Was her act a piece of rustic coquetry, or had she resented his advances?  Nor did her next words settle the question.

“Ye kin do yer nice talk and philanderin’ after we’ve settled whar we are, what we’re goin’, and what’s goin’ to happen.  Jest now it ’pears to me that ez these yere logs are the only thing betwixt us and ’kingdom come,’ ye’d better be hustlin’ round with a few spikes to clinch ’em to the floor.”

She handed him a hammer and a few spikes.  He obediently set to work, with little confidence, however, in the security of the fastening.  There was neither rope nor chain for lashing the logs together; a stronger current and a collision with some submerged stump or wreckage would loosen them and wreck the cabin.  But he said nothing.  It was the girl who broke the silence.

“What’s your front name?”

“Miles.”

“Miles,—­that’s a funny name.  I reckon that’s why you war so far off and distant at first.”

Mr. Hemmingway thought this very witty, and said so.  “But,” he added, “when I was a little nearer a moment ago, you stopped me.”

“But you was moving faster than the shanty was.  I reckon you don’t take that gait with your lady friends at Sacramento!  However, you kin talk now.”

“But you forget I don’t know ‘where we are,’ nor ’what’s going to happen.’”

“But I do,” she said quietly.  “In a couple of hours we’ll be picked up, so you’ll be free again.”

Something in the confidence of her manner made him go to the door again and look out.  There was scarcely any current now, and the cabin seemed motionless.  Even the wind, which might have acted upon it, was wanting.  They were apparently in the same position as before, but his sounding-line showed that the water was slightly falling.  He came back and imparted the fact with a certain confidence born of her previous praise of his knowledge.  To his surprise she only laughed and said lazily, “We’ll be all right, and you’ll be free, in about two hours.”

“I see no sign of it,” he said, looking through the door again.

“That’s because you’re looking in the water and the sky and the mud for it,” she said, with a laugh.  “I reckon you’ve been trained to watch them things a heap better than to study the folks about here.”