"Sleep? Oh, yes, sometimes. That's the last thing a captain thinks of, though. If I should sleep too much it might mean an eternal sleep for my passengers and crew. Now hurry into bed and get warm, chicken. I'll see that you have some hot chocolate at once."
It was nearly two hours later, and Hope had quite slept off the effects of her wetting, when the two girls ventured forth again, but now the motion was still and even, and the old ship steady as a house floor, for they were under the lee of Cape Trafalgar, making swift time for Tarifa and the Straits.
As the girls sat lazily, after their morning's outlook, in the pleasant saloon, amid a group of ladies and children, listening to the cheerful chatter going on about them, and laughing at the antics of the little tots playing about in charge of their gaily-turbaned Indian ayahs, or nurses, Dwight came in, all excitement, and cried,
"Come, girls, we're going to have an exhibition. Loo Wing has made an elegant kite—regular Chinese one, you know—and we're going to fly it from the after-deck. Hurry up!"
They hastily followed his rush around the guards, and after them trailed all the children old enough to run alone, and many of the mothers, for anything new is welcome at sea. On the after-deck they found the captain, Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Malcolm, and other passengers, assisting the cook's boy, Loo Wing, inputting the last touches to a singular erection of red, yellow, and purple, made of crinkled paper, which looked like a hybrid creature, half bird, half dragon.
Loo Wing had it in hand, and Mr. Lawrence was adjusting its immensely long tail, while the captain was paying out twine from a stick.
"Oh, uncle!" called Dwight in an agonized voice, "you know I was to start it. Loo Wing promised I should."
"Well, well, who said you weren't? We're only making ready. But be careful and not let it get tangled in the rigging," was quickly returned.
"No, indeed!" cried the boy, trembling with excitement, as he received from the smiling oriental the gaudy thing, and started for the taffrail eager to see it off on its aerial journey.
But he was in too great a hurry, and despite warning cries from Captain Hosmer, Loo Wing, and the Bengali boy, who was supposed to be polishing the brass rod of the taffrail, he sent the kite up just in season for a contrary puff of wind to catch its extended wings, and blow it squarely into the topmost shrouds and ratlines of the mizzen-mast, where, entangled in the network of ropes, it fluttered helplessly.