“No, we didn’t. How could we without a breath of wind? All we did was to lie there and roast and roll on the big swell, with Maitland savage at losing the schooner, and fidgeting to death about the two absent boats. I heard him talking to Staples.
“‘A great error, Staples,’ he said. ‘I had no business to leave the poor fellows behind without any provisions in case of accident, and I ought to have known better.’
“All that day we had the horizon swept with glasses in the hope of seeing you fellows come rowing after us, but it was getting close to night before the man at the masthead shouted that a boat was in sight, and I went up aloft to make out if it was you. But it wasn’t, old chap. It was Ramsey with the second cutter, and the poor chaps’ faces were awful as they were hauled up to the davits. They were so hoarse that they couldn’t speak, and I felt queer to see their wild-eyed look and the rush they made for the water that was put ready for them.
“Of course they had seen nothing of you, and that night everybody began to look blank and talk in whispers, while I had something for supper, Van, which didn’t agree with me, and I never got a wink of sleep all night.
“Next day was calm as ever, and we were slowly rolling on the swell; the hammock rails were as hot as the bell, and the pitch was oozing out everywhere. I quite spoilt a pair of hind leg sleeves with the tar, going up to the masthead. My word, they were gummy.”
“What had you been doing? Who mast-headed you?” asked Mark.
“Doing? Nothing. Nobody mast-headed me, only myself.”
“What for?”
“Well, you are a lively sort of a chap to have for a messmate, Van. That’s gratitude, that is, for going up to look after you with the glass. Now if it had been my case I should have said:— ‘Mark Vandean, my most attached friend, I regret extremely that in your anxiety to gain tidings of me and my boat, you should have brought the cloth of your sit-downs into contact with the inspissated juice of the Norwegian fir, to their destruction and conversion into sticking-plaister. My tailors are Burns and Screw, Cork Street, Bond Street, London. Pray allow me to present you with a new pair.’”
“Oh, Bob, what a tongue you have!”