“One must eat and one must sleep,” said Oliver Lane, “even if a fellow has been knocked on the head and nearly killed.”
Every one was of the same opinion; but though there were a few attempts at jocularity, the mirth was forced, and all knew that they were trying to hide the deep feelings of thankfulness in their hearts for their safety, after passing through as terrible an ordeal as could fall to the lot of man.
There was another reason, too, for the solemnity which soon prevailed; the captain lay dead in the cabin—the man who not many hours before was in full possession of health, and now sleeping calmly there, beyond sharing the hopes and fears of those whom he had left behind. Consequently, men went to and fro as if afraid of their steps being heard, and for the most part conversed in whispers for some time, till the question arose about keeping watch.
“There’s only one thing to keep a watch for to-night,” said the mate to Oliver,—“savages.”
“If there are savages here, would they not have been drowned, Mr Rimmer?”
“Perhaps—or burned to death. Then there’s nothing to watch for.”
“Not for the wave that may come and carry us back to sea?”
“No; that would be too long a watch, sir. Such an eruption as we have encountered only comes once in a man’s lifetime. I’m in command now, and I shall let every poor fellow have ten or a dozen hours’ good sleep, and I am so utterly done up that I shall take the same amount myself.”
The consequence was that all through that natural darkness of night dead silence reigned.
But not for ten or a dozen hours. Before eight of them were passed, Oliver Lane was awake and on deck, eager and excited with all a naturalist’s love of the wild world, to see what their novel surroundings would be like.