The sailors squatted down, finding such ease as was possible, and quiet fell over all. The night was a dark one, and very still; there was not a breath of wind to fill the sail in the boat, half the men there were getting what repose they could, and the others trusted more to the current than to their oars through the darkness. Silence had fallen upon all there as well as on the raft.
But Mr. Gilchrist could not sleep. He was a nervous, excitable man, and the new and excessively perilous position in which he found himself precluded all possibility of sleep. His senses seemed rather to be preternaturally acute, and he could not even close his eyes.
The lapping of the sea against the raft, the occasional gleam of something swiftly passing, and which he believed to be a shark accompanying the crazy little craft,—for what purpose he shuddered to think,—the occasional sounds which reached him from the boat, all kept him awake.
He lay, half-reclining, with his face towards the boat, which was full in his view. He could faintly see the oars dipping into the water, keeping way on the boat, and Kershaw's slim figure holding the tiller ropes. Presently he saw the one set of men relieved by the other, he smiled to observe the mate's long arms tossed out, evidently accompanying a portentous yawn, and then he was replaced by a shorter, broader back, which Mr. Gilchrist knew must belong to Kirke.
A sort of half-doze succeeded for a short time, then Ralph changed his position, which startled him into wakefulness once more, and discontented tones reached him from the boat.
"What are you about? Steer straight. You will tip us all over. What's the fellow doing?"
"Dropped my cap overboard. I was not going to lose it. Shut up!"
A few more murmurs, then all was still again; but, was he mistaken? did his eyes, unaccustomed to judge of objects in the darkness, deceive him, or were they farther from the boat than before?