“Go ahead and sleep,” says Catty.
“Maybe it can be done,” says I, “but I haven’t ever got used to sleeping on the corner of a case of canned corn. The difficulty,” says I, “is where to put my feet.”
“Um.... Let’s fix up a place to be comfortable,” says Catty. “It’s dark enough, and with this mutiny plot going on, nobody’s going to keep close watch. We’ll make us a cave,” says he.
“You go ahead,” says I, “and when it’s done call me.”
“I mean it,” says he. “We can shift these boxes, and kind of pile them around, and make a space in the middle big enough to lie down in. It’ll be safer, too. Kind of a hiding place.”
“All right,” says I. “Commence.”
It turned out to be easier than I thought. We just shifted cases and rucked them away cautious and piled them in a tier around a spot about five feet square, right slam in the middle of the pile. It took a half an hour, because we had to work slow and be careful not to make any noise. When it was done Catty says, “I’ll take the first watch and you snooze. In two hours I’ll wake you and it’ll be your watch.”
So I cuddled up on the sand and shut my eyes. At first the sand felt kind of soft and comfortable. Pretty soon it wasn’t so soft, and then it started to get hard. In fifteen minutes it was harder than any rock I ever heard of. It was a mean hard—the kind of a hard that reaches out and pokes you. Never again as long as I live will I try to sleep on sand. I ached and creaked. But I was so tired and so sleepy that pretty soon I fell off to sleep and dreamed dreams. I never was so busy dreaming in my life, and none of them pleasant.
It seemed as if I’d hardly shut my eyes when Catty shook me and whispered that it was my watch.
“You said I could sleep two hours,” says I.