“Comin’,” cried a voice, followed by the sounds of thrashing about and inquiries of the Lord to know where her clothes were.
Then at the hatch appeared a face blind with sleep. She ran with Ratcliffe to get the lashings off the anchor, helped to let go the halyards, and as the anchor fell and the Sarah swung to her moorings a couple of cable lengths from and outside the Juan, down she sat on the deck like a person collapsing under a heavy load.
The sight of the Juan did not seem to move her at all. Like a dormouse suddenly electrified into life and movement, the stimulus withdrawn, the mechanism ceased to act. She yawned, turned on her side, and hid her face in the crook of her arm as if to shut out the sun. Satan, whistling between his teeth, stood with his hands on the rail looking at the Juan.
“They’re wakin’ up,” said he.
A fellow with a red handkerchief round his head had appeared on deck. He came and looked over the side at the Sarah, then vanished.
“Gone to wake Cark out of his beauty sleep,” said Satan. “Look! There’s two more of them movin’ about like sick flies. Will you look at the way they’ve stowed them sails?—and they’ve got her a sight too close to the reef. Get a Western Ocean sea suddenly runnin’ and the anchor to drag, where’d they be?”
He turned and contemplated the prostrate figure of Jude.
“There’s another sleepin’ beauty,” said he. “Ought a be married to Cark. Well they’d look in the same hammock with Sellers fannin’ the flies off them!”
The figure on the deck turned on its back, stretched out its arms, yawned, and then sat up holding its knees.
Youth may sneer at Age; but, anyhow, Age knows nothing of the weariness of Youth, of a morning.