The cutter was half-decked, with a tidy little cabin forward, and a couple of bunks for sleeping—one on each side of the well; in these the party very shortly disposed themselves, for they knew that a pretty stiff day’s work lay before them; and having established the best defence in their power against the musquitoes, slept as campaigners sleep, in right down earnest.
“Hallo, Nils! where are we?” asked a sleepy voice next morning.
The Captain, who had curled himself into the opposite bunk, was not quite certain whether it was not still a part of his dreams.
The next call was quite enough to settle this fact.
“Nils!” roared Moodie, “why Nils! confound the fellow, I believe he is asleep.”
And so, sure enough, he was, with his head on the rudder-case, as fast as any one of the seven sleepers of Ephesus; and poor Nils was by no means singular in this respect—passengers were asleep, attendants were asleep, dogs were asleep, Jacob was asleep and snoring, the winds were asleep, everything was asleep but the sails, and they were waving to and fro with the knittles pattering against their surfaces, and shaking the night dew on the deck like rain, while over all, like an eider-down coverlet, had sunk on them all a steaming white fog, so thick that the sharpest eyes could not see the little burgee at the mast-head, or the out-haul block at the bowsprit end. It was not dark, it never is in summer, but no one could tell whether the sun had risen or not.
“Here’s a go!” said the Captain.
“Faith! I wish it was a go,” said the Parson, putting his head out of the cabin door; “it seems to me just the reverse.”
Moodie, whose clever plan seemed to promise anything but success, was as sulky as Nils had been overnight, and rated the poor fellow soundly for going to sleep.