Crouch rose to his feet, at the same time bringing the fist of one hand into the opened palm of the other, with a gesture suggestive of the utmost satisfaction.
"Good!" he cried. "There's three men on board who won't be baulked by anything--three men who have sailed the seas together for the greater part of their lives. And there's the boy, too--a rare lad, as I promise you, who knows no more of fear than I about keeping bees. Whisker's in a bad way just at present, but he'll pull round long before morning. He was never born to be drowned; and for the matter of that, neither were you or I."
In spite of the dangers that the morrow was almost certain to bring forth, in spite of the immediate presence of so formidable an adversary as the U93, these two merchant captains--men who had spent the best of their years in facing the manifold dangers of the sea, in every quarter of the globe--laid them down to sleep, as if nothing unusual had occurred, or was likely to occur. Captain Crouch snored lustily; whereas Captain Cookson appeared perfectly comfortable stretched at full length upon the floor, with a rolled-up overcoat doing duty for a pillow.
Jimmy, in the meantime, slept the sleep of pure exhaustion on the comfortable bunk in Captain Cookson's cabin. Soon after his rescue, he had been given some hot soup; and almost immediately after drinking it, he had dropped off into a heavy slumber, from which he did not awake until the first signs of daybreak were far spread upon the eastern skyline.
The first thing he saw was the lean, wiry figure of Crouch, standing in the open doorway, with a large telescope under his arm. On the one side of Crouch was Cookson; on the other, Whisker, who seemed more bulky, more huge than ever, since his great form was silhouetted against the half-light of approaching day.
"That's her, right enough," Captain Crouch was saying. "That's the 'Marigold' that we came out of Hull to look for; and on board of her there's the greatest villain that ever tied a reef-knot or a bowline in a bight."
Jimmy sprang out of bed, and hastily dressed in a suit of seaman's clothes which he found laid out upon a chair. A moment later he was on the main-deck with the three merchant captains, who had come to some sort of mutual understanding that they should command the ship together. They formed a kind of triumvirate, wherein the knowledge, experience and powers of initiative of each were combined and amplified.
Crouch turned to Jimmy, and asked him if he had recovered from the trying ordeal of the previous day. The boy answered that he felt no ill effects; whereat Crouch laughed, and slapped Whisker on the back.
"Here's seventeen stone," said he, "that can no more sink in salt water than a corked-up, empty bottle. Mark my words, my boy, we were not saved as we were at the eleventh hour for nothing. It doesn't do to count your chickens afore they're hatched, but Rudolf Stork's not seen the last of us yet."
Meanwhile, Cookson had run up the bridge steps, where he called both his brother captains and Jimmy to his side.