The brothers accordingly went below, and sat down to a game of chess. Harold gave grave attention to the game and won it: he was of a calm, self-possessed nature now, though fiery in earlier youth; but the excitement of the scene on deck filled Robin with mingled indignation and mirth, distracting his thoughts from the board. Robin moved his castle as if it were a knight, jumping over the heads of a couple of pawns, and captured his own queen by mistake in a very triumphant manner.
"Chess is too dull and sober a game for me!" exclaimed Robin, starting from his seat when Harold gave the inevitable checkmate; "I always feel inclined to go head-over-heels when I'm done, to recover from the strain of so much thinking!"
[CHAPTER IV.]
A BATTLE, AND ITS RESULT.
"I AM glad to see you able to come on deck, Miss Petty," said Harold, on the following morning, when the old lady, looking paler and more wrinkled than she had done on the preceding day, made her way to a bench. "We have had a wonderfully quiet night for the Channel; Neptune is treating us kindly."
"I don't know what you mean by a quiet night," was the peevish reply; "and his name is not Neptune but Gump."
Harold did not consider himself obliged to correct the old lady's mistake, and suppressed the smile which rose to his lips.
"I was as miserable as I could be!" continued Miss Petty. "I was boxed up in a swinging cage which would not keep steady for a minute, and with a cat for a companion!"
"A cat?" repeated Harold.
"Yes; a cat, a wild cat—a tiger cat!" exclaimed the Lammikin's guardian, looking angrily in the direction of Shelah, who was standing staring at the man at the wheel. "There were two berths—that's what they call them—one over the other. I've never had Master Robin's fancy for climbing, so I chose the lower berth for myself, and helped the child up to hers as well as I could. I bade Shelah keep quiet and go to sleep. I was just dropping off myself, in spite of the sickening motion of the ship, when down comes a foot on my nose, and before I have time to so much as cry out, there is Miss Mischief with a bang on the cabin floor, as if she had taken a flying leap, and had fallen flat on her face! She roared, and I left her to roar; I was not going to hoist her up again, to go tumbling about like a monkey. I've made up my mind to one thing; never—no, never—take charge of a child on ship-board again!"