“Sleepy is he?” said McBain, smiling; “well, that is just the nearest approach to sea-sickness. We won’t disturb him, and he’ll be all right and merry again to-morrow.”
“What do you think of the weather, captain?” asked Allan.
McBain gave one glance round at sea and sky, and a look aloft as if to see that everything was still right there, ere he replied,—
“The wind is fair, Allan, that’s all I can say, but we’ll have enough of it before morning; the only danger is meeting ice; it is often as far south as this, at this time of the year.”
The night began to fall even as he spoke, for great grey clouds had rolled up and hidden the sinking sun; sky and sea seemed to meet, and the horizon was everywhere close aboard of them. The motion of the Snowbird was an unpleasant jerky one; she pitched sharply into the hollows and as quickly rose again; she took little water on board, but what little she did ship, made decks and rigging wet and slippery. Presently both Allan and Rory were advised to go below for the night, and feeling the same strange sleepiness stealing over them that had overcome Ralph, they made a bolt for the companion. Allan succeeded in fetching it at once, and when half-way down he stopped to laugh at Rory, who was rolling porpoise-fashion in the lee scuppers. But Rory was more successful in his next attempt. In the saloon they found Ralph sound enough and snoring, and Peter, the steward, staggering in through the doorway with the supper. The lamp was lighted, and both that and the swing-tables were apparently trying to jump out of their gymbals, and go tumbling down upon Ralph’s prostrate form. In fact everything seemed awry, and the table and chairs were jerking about anyhow, and, as Rory said, “making as much creaking as fifty pairs of new boots.”
“Ah! Peter, you’re a jewel,” cried Rory, as the steward placed on the table, between the fiddle bars, a delicious lobster salad and two cups of fragrant coffee. “Yes, Peter,” continued Rory, “it’s a jewel you are entirely; there isn’t a man that ever I knew, Peter, could beat ye at making a salad. And it isn’t blarney either that I’m trying to put upon you.”
With supper the sleepy feeling passed away, and Rory said he felt like a giant refreshed, only not quite so tall.
“Bring my dear old fiddle, Peter,” he cried, “like a good soul. This is just the night for music.”
He played and Allan read for two hours at least, both steadying themselves as best they could at the weather side of the table; then they wakened Ralph, and all three turned in for the night and were soon fast asleep.
It was early summer, and Ralph, so he thought in his dream, was reclining, book in hand, on a sweet wild-thyme-scented green bank in Glentroom. A blue sky was reflected from the broad bosom of the lake, the green was on the birch, the milk-white flowers on the thorn, and the feathery larch-trees were tasselled with crimson; bees went droning from wild flower to wild flower, and the woodlands resounded with the music of a thousand joyous birds.