“No. Awake, I think.”
“Well, we know that,” cried Mark, pettishly. “Yes, I remember now. I must have gone to sleep.”
“That’s about as near as we shall get to it, sir,” said Tom Fillot. “This here’s the cabin, and there ought to be a locker here, with matches in it, and a lamp. Wait a moment.”
There was a rustling as Mark listened, and the rush of the water came up from below, and he could feel that the schooner was gently careening over as she glided on through the calm sea.
“Hooroar!” said Tom; and the next moment there was the scratch of a match, and the little cabin was illumined, showing Tom Fillot learning over a lamp, which directly after burned up, and showed that the cabin door must have been opened while they slept, for a tub of water and a bucketful of biscuits had been thrust in.
“Look at that,” cried Dick Bannock. “Now, if we’d been awake, some of us might have got out and took the schooner again.”
“Not much chance o’ that, messmate,” said Tom Fillot. “They’re too cunning not to have taken care. Don’t mean to starve us, seemingly.”
“Put out the light,” said Mark, after a glance round, to see that Mr Russell was unchanged, and the next moment the cabin was in darkness.
“Have your arms ready,” he whispered, “and keep silence. Perhaps—”
He did not finish speaking, for a faint shadow lay across the cabin skylight, and he was aware of the fact that some one must have been watching, probably listening as well.