“Now we have only the forts; they are about a quarter of a mile further down. Go forward, please, and tell the men not to move till they get orders.”
Another quarter of an hour passed, and Martyn felt sure that they were now well beyond the forts. For a few minutes longer he held on, and then passed the word along the deck that the danger was over. Now that they knew their exact position there was no longer any occasion for sounding. The men in the boat were called up, and the watch off duty ordered below, and when morning broke the land was far behind them. A brisk wind had sprung up from the south-east, and the vessel was just able to lay her course for Athens.
The doctor had remained below during their passage through the straits.
“I should only have been in the way if I had been on deck,” he said when Horace chaffed him for taking matters so easily. “When a man can do no good, it is always better for him to get out of the way; and after all there is no great pleasure in standing for hours afraid to move, and without any duty to perform; so I just chatted for a bit with your father, and directly I saw the sleeping draught I had given him was beginning to take effect I turned in myself, and had as comfortable a sleep as ever I had in my life. After sleeping on sofas for three weeks, in that heathen sort of way, it was a comfort to get between sheets again.”
“Well, but you went to bed the night before, doctor?”
“That was so,” the doctor agreed. “But a good thing is just as good the second time as it is the first—better, perhaps. The first time the novelty of a thing prevents you altogether enjoying it. I knew very well that if we ran into any of the Turkish ships, or the forts opened fire at us, I was like to hear it plainly enough.”
“And would you have lain there then, doctor?”
“No, lad. I would have had my duties to perform; and I would have dressed and gone into the main deck at once, with my instruments ready to do anything I could for those that required it.”
“Have you seen my father this morning, doctor?”
“Yes; and I am glad to say that he is all the better for his two nights’ sleep. His pulse is stronger, and I shall get him up here after breakfast. The news that we were fairly out to sea, and that all danger was over, was better for him than any medicine. Well, lad, we did not think eight-and-forty hours ago that we would be racing down the Ægean again, on board the Misericordia, by this time. We have had a wonderful escape of it altogether, and I would not like to go through it again for enough money to set me up for life in Scotland. When we were on board that Turkish brig, on our way to Constantinople, I would not have given a bawbee for our chances.”