Nothing more had been said to Mr Burne till quite evening, but then the professor felt it to be his duty to speak of the suspicion, and did so; but the old lawyer laughed.
“What nonsense, Preston!” he said; “why, the man and his crew are like so many good-tempered gypsy boys. No, sir, I am not going to be scared because the night is coming on. Poor fellows, they are honest enough. That sour Turk—I don’t like the fellow—has been filling our heads with nonsense to make himself seem more important. It’s all right.”
“I hope it is,” said the professor to himself, and in due course he lay down, but not to sleep.
During the day, by a quiet understanding, he and Yussuf had taken it in turns to snatch an hour’s repose, with the result that they were far better prepared to encounter the night than might have been supposed.
“We will lie down, excellency,” Yussuf took the opportunity of whispering; “but one of us must not sleep.”
After a time the old lawyer, who had been leaning back watching the stars from far above till they seemed to dip down in the transparent sea, yawned aloud, and then began to talk in an unknown tongue, using a strange guttural language which for the most part consisted of a repetition, at regular intervals, of the word “Snorruk,” and this had a wonderful effect upon his companions, who had felt listless and drowsy after the hot day; but the coolness of the night and the interesting nature of Mr Burne’s discourse effectually banished sleep, and hence it was that, when the skipper and a couple of his men came stealing aft to apparently change the steersman, the professor sat up, and Lawrence saw that Yussuf was wide awake and on the qui vive.
This occurred three times, and then the rosy morning lit up the tops of the distant mountains, and made the sea flash as if it were all so much molten topaz.
A pleasant listless day followed, and another and another, during which the travellers slept in turn, and watched the various islands seem to rise out of the sea, grow larger, and then, after they were passed, sink down again into the soft blue water.
It was a delicious dreamy time, the only drawbacks being the suspicions of the boatmen, and the cramped nature of the space at disposal.
They sailed on and on now, with the water surging beneath their bows and the little vessel careening over in the brilliant sunshine; but they were still far from their destination, and now the question had arisen whether it would not be wise to put in at the principal port of Cyprus, which they were now nearing, to obtain more provisions, as the wind was so light that the prospect of their reaching Ansina that night was very doubtful.