As a sailor always sleeps most soundly when the wind blows high, and he is really "rock'd in the cradle of the deep", it is almost unnecessary to say that these lads dropped soundly off almost as soon as their heads touched the pillows.
Nor did they awake until eight bells at the end of the darksome middle watch, when Conal came down to call them.
"Oil-skins, Conal?"
"Ay, Duncan, and you'll need them too. Better lock Vike in your cabin."
"That is what I mean to do."
Poor Viking did not half like it though. There is no dog in the world makes a better sailor's companion when far away at sea than a Newfoundland, and I speak from experience. But such dogs do not appreciate danger sufficiently high, nor have they good enough sea-legs to face a storm and walk the deck of a heaving ship. Therefore they often get washed into the lee scuppers.
On the present occasion Vike made up his mind to be as naughty a dog as he could.
"I shall wake the skipper," he told Duncan, speaking through the key-hole as it were. "Wowff!" he barked. "Wowff! wowff! What do you think of that?"
Well, the sound could certainly be heard high over the roaring of the wind and the dash of angry waves.
The captain heard it in his dreams; but it takes more than the barking of a dog to awake a sailor born. So Talbot just hitched himself round, and went off to sleep on the other tack.