“Well, I sha’n’t bother,” he muttered. “I’m shut up here just as if I was in prison. I’ve been to sleep, and I’ve woke up in the dark, because it’s night; and that’s about the worst of it. I don’t see anything to mind. There’s no watch to keep, so I sha’n’t be roused up by that precious bell; and as every sailor ought to get a good long sleep whenever he can, why here goes.”
Perhaps Hilary Leigh’s thoughts were not quite so doughty as his words; but whatever his thoughts were, he fought them down in the most manful way, stretched himself out upon the straw, and after lying thinking for a few minutes he dropped off fast asleep, breathing as regularly and easily as if he had been on board the Kestrel, and rocked in the cradle of the deep.
Chapter Twelve.
A more Pleasant Awakening, with a Hungry Fit.
“Tchu weet—tchu weet—tchu weet! Come to tea, Jack! Come to tea, Jack! Come to tea, Jack! Whips Kitty! Whips Kitty! Whips Kitty! Tcho-tcho-tcho!”
Hilary Leigh lay half awake, listening to the loud song of a thrush, full-throated and joyous, whistling away to his mate sitting close by in her clay cup of a nest upon four pale greenish-blue spotted eggs; and as he heard the notes he seemed to be in the old bedroom at Sir Henry Norland’s, where he used to leave his window open to be called by the birds.
Yes, he was back in the old place, and here was the rich, ruddy, golden light of the sun streaming in at his window, and through on to the opposite wall; and it was such a beautiful morning that he would jump up and take his rod, and go down to the big hole in the river. The tench would bite like fun on a morning like this. There were plenty of big worms, too, in the old watering-pot, tough as worms should be after a good scouring in a heap of wet moss. Just another five minutes and he’d get up, and when he met Adela at breakfast he could brag about what a good one he was at early rising, and show her all the beautiful tench, and—
“Hallo! Am I awake?”