“Bad,” said Syd, laconically.
“Nonsense! make a bold fight of it.”
“Fight?” cried Syd; “why Baby Jenks could thrash me now. How long shall I be ill?”
“Well, if it gets rough, as it promises to, I dare say you’ll have a week of it.”
“A week?” groaned Syd.
Then some time after, to himself, between bad paroxysms of misery—
“Never mind,” he said; “by the time I am able to go on deck again I shall look fit to be seen.”
It was about a couple of hours later, when the frigate had got beyond a great point which jutted out into the sea, and began to stretch away for the ocean, that Syd awakened to the fact that the vessel seemed to be having a game with him. She glided up and up, bearing him tenderly and gently as it were up to the top of a hill of water, and then, after holding him there for a moment, she dived down and left him, with a horrible sensation of falling that grew worse as the wind increased, and the Sirius heeled over.
“I wonder whether, if I made a good brave effort, I could master this giddy weak sensation,” thought the boy. “I’ll try.”
He made his effort—a good, bold, brave effort—and then he lay down and did not try to make any more efforts for a week, when after passing through what seemed to be endless misery, during which he lay helplessly in his hammock, listening to the creaking of the ship’s timbers and the rumble that went on overhead, and often thinking that the ship was diving down into the sea never to come up again, he was aroused by a gruff voice, which sounded like Barney Strake’s. It was very dark, and he felt too ill to open his eyes, but he spoke and said—