"You will be sure to let me know if she changes her course or anything?"
"I promise you that I will come straight down, Major."
Three quarters of an hour later, George stole noiselessly down and peeped into the stateroom. He had turned down the swinging lamp before he went up, but there was enough light to enable him to see that his master had fallen off to sleep. He took the news up to Hawkins, who at once gave orders that no noise whatever was to be made. The men still moved about the deck, but all went barefooted.
"The wind keeps just the same," Hawkins said. "I can't make it more than three and a half knots through the water. I would give a year's pay if it would go round dead ahead of us; we should soon pick her up then. As it is, she keeps crawling away. However, we can make her out, on such a night as this, a good deal further than she is likely to get before morning. Besides, we shall be having the moon up soon, and as we are steering pretty nearly east, it will show her up famously.
"Now I will give you the same advice that you gave the governor. You had much better lie down for a bit. Purvis has gone down for a sleep, Perry will go down when he comes up at twelve, and I shall get an hour or two myself later on."
"I won't go down," George said, "but I will bring a couple of blankets up and lie down aft. I promised the Major that I would let him know if there was any change in the wind, or in the brigantine's course, so wake me directly there is anything to tell him. I have put his bell within reach. I have no doubt I shall hear it through that open skylight if he rings; but if not, wake me at once."
"All right. Trust us for that."
Twice during the night George got up and went below. The first time Frank had not moved. The second he found that the tumbler of lime juice and water, on the table at the side of the bunk, was nearly half emptied; and that his master had again gone off to sleep and was breathing quietly and regularly.
"He is going on all right," he said to Hawkins, when he went up. "There is no fever yet, anyhow, for he has drunk only half that glass of lime juice. If he had been feverish he would not have stopped until he had got to the bottom of it."
When George next woke, the morning was breaking.