“They heard us,” I said, and answered. “Try again with one.”
He struck once as loudly as he could, and we waited excitedly to hear one blow given apparently on a bulk-head.
“Those are our friends there,” I cried excitedly.
“If it arn’t old Frenchy gammoning us, sir,” said Barney.
“I think it must be our friends,” I said, feeling unwilling to give up the idea; and I was going to add something, when there came to us plainly enough the sound of feet passing somewhere overhead, and directly after a voice shouted something, but what we could not hear.
Chapter Thirty Two.
Our heads, on comparing notes, began to feel more bearable, and as the throbbing gradually died away we could feel that the effort to think was easier, while our thoughts were clearer, and before long we began to feel about so as to learn what kind of place we were in, and made out that it was an oblong kind of space between cases, and with barrels underneath, and upon which we had been lying when we began to come to. We could learn nothing further, and there were no replies now to the tappings we gave from time to time, a fact which made my heart sink rather low. For I knew that there must be some reason for this, and I was trying to puzzle it out, when Barney Blane said suddenly—
“Say, messmates, arn’t it ’bout time as some ’un came round to feed the crew?”