“Impossible; I never sleep. I may occasionally lapse a little, but I never sleep.”
“You were snoring.”
Wiley arose, looking sad and offended.
“If I did not love you even as a brother I should feel hurt by your cruel words,” he muttered, picking up an empty pistol that had fallen near the spring. “But I know you’re joking.”
“You just said you were dreaming, Wiley,” reminded Frank. “Is this the way you are to be trusted? What if our enemies had crept upon us while you were supposed to be guarding the camp?”
“Don’t speak of it!” entreated the marine marvel. “It hurts me. In case I closed my eyes by accident for a moment, I hope you will forgive me the oversight. Be sure I shall never forgive myself. Oh, but that was a lovely dream! There were seventeen pirates coming over the rail, with cutlasses, and dirks, and muskets, and cannon in their teeth, and I was just wading into them in earnest when you disturbed the engagement.
“In that dream I was simply living over again that terrible contest with the Chinese pirates in which I engaged while commanding my good ship, the Sour Dog. That was my first cruise in Eastern waters. The Sour Dog was a merchantman of nine billion tons burthen. We were loaded with indigo, and spice, and everything nice. We had started on a return voyage, and were bound southward to round the Cape of Good Hope. I had warned my faithful followers of the dangers we might encounter in the Indian Ocean, which was just literally boiling over with pirates of various kinds.
“One thing that had troubled us greatly was the fact that our good ship was overrun with rats. I set my nimble wits to work to devise a scheme of ridding us of those rats. I manufactured a number of very crafty traps, and set them where I believed they would be the most efficacious. You should have seen the way I gathered in those rats. Every morning I had thirty or forty rats in those traps, and soon I was struck with a new scheme. Knowing the value of rats in China, I decided to gather up those on board, put about, and deliver them as a special cargo at Hongkong. With this object in view, I had a huge cage manufactured on the jigger deck. In this cage I confined all the rats captured, and soon I had several hundred of them. These rats, Mr. Merriwell, saved our lives, remarkable though it may seem to you. Bear with me just a moment and I will elucidate.
“We had put about and set our course for the Sunda Islands when an unfortunate calm befell us. Now, a calm in those waters is the real thing. When it gets calm there it is so still that you can hear a man think a mile away. The tropical sun blazed down on the blazing ocean, and our sails hung as still and silent as Willie Bryan’s tongue after the last Presidential election. The heat was so intense that the tar in the caulking of the vessel bubbled and sizzled, and the deck of the Sour Dog was hot as a pancake griddle. Suddenly the watch aloft sent down a cry, ‘Ship, ho!’ We sighted her heaving up over the horizon and bearing straight down on us.”
“But I thought you said there was no wind,” interrupted Merry. “How could a ship come bearing down upon you with no wind to sail by?”