“What, Billy?”
“Them shell-fish, sir, more like oysterses than—I mean more like muss—muzzles—oysters—muzzles—muzzles!”
Mark raised himself upon his arm and looked at his companion, who was dimly-seen in the starlight.
“Why, Billy, what’s the matter?” he said. “Sleeping uneasy?”
“Easy it is, sir. Eh? Sleep. No, Mr Mark, sir. What say?—sleep, sir. No; wide-awake as you are, sir.”
“That’s right,” said Mark, gazing out once more at the softly glowing stars. The crescent moon had gone down in a bed of clouds, and all around the darkness seemed to grow deeper and softer, till it was as if it could be touched, and everything was wonderfully still, save when there came from the distance a sharp whistling that might have been from a bird, but was more probably escaping steam.
Now and then Mark could see strange lights glowing, and then feel a tremulous motion such as would be felt at home when a vehicle was passing the house, and as if this might be thunder, it was generally after he had noticed a flashing light playing over the trees, sometimes bright enough to reveal their shapes, but as a rule so faint as to be hardly seen.
He thought about his father going back wearied out with a long search. Then he wondered whether he had gone back, and at last the idea struck him as strange that the party had not fired a gun at intervals to attract their attention.
He had just arrived at this point, and was considering whether a light he saw was a luminous fungus, when a strange noise saluted his ear, a sound that for the moment he supposed to have come from the forest. Then it seemed to be in the cave, and he was about to spring up, when he realised that the noise was made by Billy Widgeon, who was too tired to let his nervous and superstitious dread trouble him any more, and was now sleeping as heavily as if he were in his bunk on board the Petrel.
Mark felt a curious sensation of irritation against a man who could go off to sleep so calmly at a time like this, but the man’s words came to mind about his father and mother, and at last Mark was fain to say to himself, “If the poor fellow can sleep why shouldn’t he?”