“Nothing, father—not a sign,” cried Poole. “Well, you needn’t stop up there, my lad. Come down, and go up again in a quarter of an hour’s time.”
Poole slipped the glass into the case slung from his left shoulder, laid hold of a rope, and looked at his companion, who did the same, and they slid down together and dropped upon the deck, to begin walking forward.
“I shan’t be sorry,” said Poole quietly, “when all these fellows are ashore.”
“Nor I neither,” replied Fitz, and then he turned his head sharply, for a familiar head was thrust out of the galley, where the stove was black and cold.
“Weel, laddies,” whispered the Camel, “I have had to put up the shutters and shut up shop, for I canna pretend to feed all this lot; but ah’m thenking ye’ll feel a bit hungry now and then, and when ye do, joost go below into the cahbin when there’s naebody looking, and open the little locker. I dinna mean to say another word, but—” He closed one ferrety-looking red eye, laid a finger alongside of his nose, showed his big teeth, and drew his head in again.
“A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse,” said Poole, laughing. “Well done, Camel! But that’s all you, Fitz.”
“Nonsense! It was a hint for both.”
“No. He has taken a fancy to you. He told me himself he had, and that it was his doing that you got up your strength so quickly.”
“Oh, gammon!” cried Fitz petulantly.
“No, it was what he calls his pheesic. He told me that when a man was in bad health—crenky, he called it—that the thing to pull him round was soup; and you know how he was always scheming something of the kind for you. I shouldn’t like to analyse too strictly what he made it of.”