“Have you put the cotton between your teeth?”
Then Jude’s, drowsily:
“Naw—leave a body alone!”
“Get out o’ your hammock, you lazy dog, an’ fix your teeth or I’ll let you down by the head!”
Then Jude’s voice, dolorous and muffled, “Shut up or you’ll be wakin’ him! Cuss my teeth—cayn’t find the cotton! Wakin’ a body up like that! Tell you I’m lookin’ for it—got it—”
A long silence, during which Ratcliffe dropped off, to be awakened an hour later by the lamentations of Jude and the sounds of Satan prodding her out of a nightmare,—a gastric nightmare, in which it appeared to her troubled soul that she had to fry a sea bat, totum terres atque rotundum, in the small galley frying pan for breakfast.
CHAPTER VII
CARQUINEZ
The tide had begun to draw out with the setting stars, and the tune of the waters on the beach had sunk to the merest thread of sound.