“Yes, I do, sir. I’m thinking all the time, as hard as a man can. Here, you’d better not handle me; I’m as wet as wet.”
“But we shall soon get alongside the schooner, shan’t we?”
“Well, it don’t seem like it, sir. Wish we could! I should just like a good old jorum of something warm, if it was only a basin of old Andy’s broth as he makes so slimy with them little round wet barley knobs. I’m all of a shiver. Here, you number one, get up and I’ll take your oar. I don’t like catching cold when I’m at sea.”
“But surely they’ll tack round, or something, so as to pick us up.”
“Here, hi! You look alive there with another of those matches. You don’t half keep them going, so that they can see where we are.”
“Aren’t any more,” said the man in the stem. “I held that one till it did burn my fingers, and it was the last.”
“Humph!” grunted the boatswain. “Well, they can’t see us, of course, and the sea’s a bit big and wide out here; let’s try if we can’t make them hear.”
He had scarcely spoken when there was a soft bellowing roar; but the sound took form and they made out—“Ahoy-y-y-y! Where away there?” breathed, it almost seemed, so distant and strange was the hail, through a speaking-trumpet.
“Cease pulling!” shouted the boatswain. “Now then, all together. Take your time from me. One, two, three—Ahoy–y–y–y!”
Every lusty throat on board the boat sent forth the cry at once, and a strange chill ran through Fitz’s breast as he noted not only how feeble the cry sounded in the immensity of space, but how it seemed thrown back upon them from something it could not penetrate—something soft and impervious which shut them in all round.