It was gray dawn now. Then high up in the west a streak of a cloud began to glow with orange and crimson beauty. Rolling clouds on the horizon astern were lit up with a fringe of gold and carmine. Then all the east became a glory of colour that was almost dazzling, but very beautiful. The god of day was rising, and this dazzlingly-painted orient formed the curtains of his couch.
Soon now, red and fiery, his beams spread in a path of blood across the sea, and lo! it was day.
Both Creggan and Mellor spent that watch very pleasantly, and before going below the latter held out his hand, and Creggan gladly grasped it.
"Good-bye," said Mellor. "We're going to be friends, you know."
CHAPTER XVII.
MESS-ROOM FUN.
The gun-room mess of H.M.S. Osprey was by no means an overcrowded one—three middies, an assistant-paymaster, a clerk, another sub-lieutenant, Mr. Wickens,[[1]] and Creggan himself.
[[1]] My prototype for this young officer was Sydney Dickens, the son of the great novelist, with whom I was shipmate, the dearest little fellow I ever knew.—G.S.
One middie did not really belong to the mess. He was a supernumerary, going out to join the flag-ship on the South American coast.
Midshipman Robertson was a funny little fellow. Not bad-looking, but choke-full of merriment and ideas for practical jokes, and when he talked to his messmates down below, he always screwed his face into puckers and dimples with the laughter he tried in vain to conceal. He was an Edinburgh boy, while young O'Callaghan, the supernumerary, came from Killarney, and was just as Irish as the steward.