“That’s Joe, sir, safe enough. Harkee there! Hear ’em?”
Sundry creaking sounds came out of the darkness some distance away now, and Tom Fillot continued in a whisper,—
“They’re hysting all the sail they can, sir. Look! you can see the water briming as she sails. They’re going same way as we. Tide’s taking us.”
“Oh, Tom Fillot, I oughtn’t to have gone to sleep. I ought to have stopped on deck.”
“No yer oughtn’t, sir. Your orders was to take your watch below, and that was enough for you. Dooty is dooty, sir, be it never so dootiful, as the proverb says.”
“But if I had been on deck I might have heard them coming, Tom.”
“And got a rap o’ the head like the pore fellows did, sir.”
“Well, perhaps so, Tom. I wonder why they didn’t strike me as they did you.”
“’Cause you’re a boy, sir, though you are a young gentleman, and a orficer. Fine thing to be a boy, sir. I was one once upon a time. Wish I was a boy at home now, instead o’ having a head like this here.”
“I’m thinking of what the captain will say,” muttered Mark, despondently, as he ignored the man’s remark.