“Your speech betrayeth you, Dick. I never heard you sling English more vigorously than now. And you have regained your cheerfulness too, and your capacity to take interest. Upon my word, I’ll think up another pun and hurl it at you if it is to have any such effect as that.”
“While you’re doing it,” said Larry, “I’m going to get myself out of the sweatbox I’ve been in all night. You may or may not have observed it, but the rain has ceased, and the tide has turned and if I may be permitted to quote Shakespeare, ‘The glow-worm shows the matin to be near.’ In modern phrase, day is breaking, and within about two hours the Hunkydory will be afloat again.”
With the relief of doffing the oppressive oilskins, and the rapidly coming daylight, the spirits of the little company revived, and it was almost a jolly mood in which they made their second meal on hard ship biscuit and still harder smoked bolognas.
VI
A LITTLE SPORT BY THE WAY
The day had just asserted itself when Larry, looking out upon the broad waters of a sound that lay between the dory and the point at which the dory would have been if she had not gone aground, rather gleefully said:
“We’ll be out of our trouble sooner than we hoped. The Hunkydory will float well before the full flood.”
“Why do you think so, Larry?” asked Tom, who had not yet recovered from his depression and was still blaming himself for the mishap and doubting the possibility of an escape that morning.