Just then Jones passed along and said to one of the boys with a jeer: “Seasick, eh! I thought so!”
“No, sir!” answered Chip, “I was sick, but I’m feeling better. Next time she goes about, I think I’ll take a hand with the rest of them.”
“Ready about! Hard-a-lee!” rang out across the deck.
Chippie jumped to his feet in an instant.
“Gee,” muttered he, “but that was a short tack,” and ran to report to his “B. M.”
“That’s good, Chippie,” said Ellsworth, “you take hold right here,” and in another minute the Bright Wing gave a spring and was off again on the port tack.
Harold French and Randall Turner were the two “B. M.’s” of the second division, and they both began cheering up their invalids and pointing to Chippie, who was right as a trivet, though his face still looked a little paler than usual.
At mess inspection there were only three boys missing; but some of those who had begun to feel well as long as they were on deck, asked suddenly to be excused before the end of dinner, and scrambled up the ladder into the fresh air as fast as they could. In the meantime Bertie Young, the master-at-arms, had given cups of broth to the patients who had remained on deck, and was urging them to chew some pieces of hard tack.
“Put something into your stomachs, boys, and that will make them feel more homelike.”
They were all feeling better by this time, and Dick Gray called out, lifting his head from underneath his blanket: