“Well, if you’ve ever tried to clap your finger on a flea,” laughed the old mariner, “you’d know what it means to keep tabs on a boat that can duck under the surface of the sea, and stay there for ten hours, moving all the while.”
Captain Barnaby Shooks somehow did not seem to talk as most sea captains do in stories. He never once said “shiver my timbers” or used any similar phrase that was calculated to stamp him as a nautical man. Perhaps this arose from the fact that many years had elapsed since last he trod the deck of a genuine sailing vessel. With the gradual disappearance of the full-rigged ships, the brigs, and the barques, all that peculiar language is going out of date. Mechanics have taken the places of the old-time sailors accustomed to clambering up the shrouds, and standing on the yards of a ship reeling in an eighty mile gale.
When later on, after the sun had set, the boys prepared to go down below for supper, that black steam yacht was still on their lee quarter, and apparently bound to keep within sighting distance.
“Goodness gracious!” Ballyhoo was remarking the last thing before he crept down the steep little ladder leading into the conning tower, from which place they could reach the lower parts of the queer vessel, “I only hope they don’t mean to ram us in the night-time, and so get rid of a dangerous rival.”
“Not much danger of that,” Oscar assured him. “Captain Shooks will keep a faithful watch every minute of the time. And besides, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that those fellows don’t know all we do about the location of sunken treasure, also that their plan is to spy on us, and then steal our thunder.”
They did not go on deck again after partaking of the evening meal in the little saloon devoted to cabin purposes, in which, as Ballyhoo said, was not room to “whirl a cat around by the tail.” The night air was cold, and the blackness would prevent them from seeing anything worth while.
None of them secured much sleep during that first night. Everything was against it, for their quarters were terribly cramped, and the air anything but fresh, even though the boat continued to remain upon the surface of the water all through the night.
“Whee! just imagine what it’s going to be when we’re down under the surface of the sea,” said Ballyhoo, at one time, as they prepared to lie down in their bunks, placed above each other in a tier.
“Oh! you can get used to most anything in time,” Jack assured him, “if only you make up your mind that way. Always think of something that’s a whole lot worse, and it’s wonderful how satisfied you soon feel.”
The boat rolled somewhat later on in the night, and Oscar, being awake, made up his mind that no doubt they were coming closer to the wide mouth of the great bay, so that they now encountered the long inward sweep of the ocean’s heaving billows.