"Oh, he's forrard, right up in the bows, keepin' a lookout.

This is a ticklish place to enter without a pilot, an' we've passed two already." This information added to her distress.

She ought not to go to him.
Full well she knew that her presence might distract him from an all-important task.

So she sat forlornly on the fore-hatch, waiting there until he might leave his post, reviewing all the bizarre procession of events since she climbed an elm-tree in the garden of Linden House on a Sunday afternoon now so remote that it seemed to be the very beginning of life.

The adventures to which that elm-tree conducted her were oddly reminiscent of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.