“I know you are, sir. But just you think what we must be, just about five hundred times as glad as you are, and we are all ready for anything you like. What’s it to be to-day?”
“Well, I don’t think we shall do much. Uncle will consider it too hot.”
“Hot, sir? Not it! Just right. We shan’t mind. Fishing, netting, rowing. You tell him not to think about us. It will just warm us up, for most on us had the shivers all night.”
The low mist began to lift soon after Rodd had had his bath, for the level rays of the sun began to pierce the grey haze as the great orange orb slowly rolled up from the depths of ocean, investing it with the loveliest of pearly tints and iridescent hues, while not a speck of sail or the clearly marked lines of topmasts could be seen upon the horizon line.
“Well,” said the doctor, at breakfast, as Rodd told him what the men had said, “the heat will be very great, but I shouldn’t spare myself. If I gave up my researches to-day it would be for the sake of the men.”
“You needn’t consider them that way, sir,” said Captain Chubb. “They would rather you didn’t. But couldn’t you do something that would spare my deck a little?”
“Well, I am afraid that’s impossible, Captain Chubb,” said the doctor.
“Ah, well, sir,” said the captain, with a sigh, “I suppose you must go on; but it seems a pity when everything’s so white and clean.”
So the captain’s decks suffered all day, and were swabbed clean again, while that evening before the mists began to gather there was a fresh surprise.
Rodd took it into his head to go up to the main cross-trees with the glass. He had said nothing, but he had some idea as to the possibility of the sloop coming into sight again, and he had made up his mind if he could see her in the distance to give Captain Chubb a broad hint, and urge him to press on full sail right through the night.