2
"I doubt if any of 'em'll face it," said the First Lieutenant hopefully, when The Day arrived. "There's a nasty lop on, and the glass is tumbling down as if the bottom had dropped out. It's going to blow a hurricane before midnight. Anyhow, they'll all be sick coming off."
The Torpedo Lieutenant was descending the ladder to the picket-boat. "Bunje and I are going in to look after them. It's too late to put it off now." He glanced at the threatening horizon. "They'll be all snug once we get them on board, and this'll all blow over before tea-time."
Off went the steamboats, the Torpedo Lieutenant in the picket-boat and the Indiarubber Man in the steam pinnace, and a tremor of excitement ran through the little cluster of children gathering at the jetty steps ashore.
"It's awfully rough outside the harbour," announced Cornelius James, submitting impatiently to his nurse's inexplicable manipulation of the muffler round his neck. "I'm never sick, though," he confided to a small and rather frightened-looking mite of a girl who clung to her nurse's hand and looked out to the distant ship with some trepidation in her blue eyes. "My daddy's a Captain," continued Cornelius James; "and I'm never sick—are you?"
She nodded her fair head. "Yeth," she lisped sadly.
"P'r'aps your daddy isn't a Captain," conceded Cornelius James magnificently.
The maiden shook her head. "My daddy's an Admiral," was the slightly disconcerting reply.
"I shall steer the boat," asserted Cornelius James presently, by way of restoring his shaken prestige.
"Oh, Corney, you can't," said Jane. "Casey always lets Georgie steer father's galley—you know he does. You're only saying that to show off."