Sail Ho! A Boy at Sea

by George Manville Fenn

I was thinking of going forward to try and make out, when there was another rustling noise above, which recalled the whispering that had passed out of my mind for the moment; then the rustling continued, and some one else came down, stepped lightly on the deck, and stood perfectly still as if looking about to see if any one was near.

It was so dark that I could not make out who it was till he walked aft not very far from where I stood, and a few moments later I saw who it was, for his figure came between my eyes and the glow from the cabin-windows.

“Why, it was Walters,” I said to myself, and then I began to wonder more and more what it all meant. I ran it over in my mind, but I could not think of any one at all likely to be Walters’ companion at night in the main-top; in fact, I could not think of any one at all likely to climb up so high, or even half-way up the shrouds.

“It couldn’t have been a cabin passenger,” I thought, “for he went forward; nor yet one of the steerage people.”

Then I knew, and wondered that I had not thought of him at first.

“Why, it was Jarette,” I said to myself. “He’s as light and active as a cat.”

I waited a bit; and then went slowly right forward and stood for a time with the men at the look-out, to gaze right away into the soft, hot, black darkness, thinking how easily we might run into another vessel, or another vessel run into us. Then setting my face aft, I went back along the starboard side, and made my way, blinking like an owl after being so long in the darkness, into the saloon-cabin, where the passengers were sitting about, some reading, others working, and where on one side I found Mr Denning playing chess with his sister.

Everything looked calm, and as if the people were happy enough, and never thinking it likely there could be any trouble about Captain Berriman or anything else.

But the saloon-cabin was so warm down there in the south that I soon went back on deck to hang over the bulwarks for a time, and then go right aft to look down at the sparkling water, all ablaze now as it seemed to rush from both sides of the rudder, where in the daytime all would be white foam.

I had no duty to perform that night to keep me on deck; but still I lingered, thinking that perhaps the cabin would be terribly hot, as it had been on the previous night, only I dropped off to sleep so soon that the heat did not trouble me.