“Oh, are you?” said the mate. “Well, I’m not. There, you are no use up here, either of you. Go down and tumble into your bunks at once.”
“But—” began Poole.
“You heard what I said, my lad. Go and have a good long snooze, and don’t make a stupid of yourself, bandying words like that. The watch have all been laughing at you both. Now then, clear the deck. I am going to keep things quiet.”
The officer in charge of a deck is “monarch of all he surveys,” like Robinson Crusoe of old, according to the poem, and as “his right there is none to dispute,” both lads yielded to Burgesses sway, went down to their berths, rolled in just as they were, and the next minute were fast asleep, breathing more loudly than would have been pleasant to any neighbour. But there was none.
Their sleep was very short but very solid all the same, and they were ready to spring up wide-awake and hurry on deck just before sunrise, upon hearing the trampling overhead of the watch going through the manoeuvres known as ’bout ship, and then proceeding to obey orders angrily shouted at them by the mate, whose loud voice betokened that he was in an unusual state of excitement, for his words were emphatic in the extreme as he addressed the men after the cry of “all hands on deck,” in a way which suggested to one who overheard that they were a gang of the laziest, slowest slovens that ever handled a rope.
“Here, rouse up!” cried Poole. “Hear him?”
“Hear him? Yes. What’s the matter?”
“I dunno. Any one would think that we were going to run the gunboat down.”
The lads ran up on deck, and stared in wonder, for instead of the catastrophe that Poole had verbally portrayed, the reverse seemed the probability. In fact, instead of their tacking against the adverse wind having carried them well out to sea, the progress they had made in a direct line was comparatively small, and to the dismay of both the sleepers as they looked over the stern, there was the gunboat not three miles away, foaming down after them under a full pressure of steam.
“How do you account for this?” said Fitz.