"Thirty hours, Godby?"
"Split me crosswise else, pal!"
"Mighty strange!" says I, reaching for the flask he had brought, for I felt my mouth bitterly parched and dry, while, added to the consuming thirst, my head throbbed miserably.
"Well, here we be, pal, clear o' the river this twelve hours and more. And, Mart'n, this is a ship—aye, by hokey, a sailer! So true on a wind, so sweet to her helm, and Master Adam's worthy of her, blister me else!"
"'Tis strange I should sleep so long!" says I, clasping my aching head.
"Why, you'm wise to sleep all ye can, pal, seeing there be nought better to do here i' the dark," says he, setting out the viands before me. "What, no appetite, Mart'n?" I shook my head. "Lord love ye, 'tis the dark and the curst reek o' this place, pal—come aloft, all's bowmon, the fine folk han't found their sea-legs yet, nor like to while this wind holds, Mart'n—so come aloft wi' Godby."
Nothing loth I rose and stumbled towards the ladder, marvelling to find my hands and feet so unwieldy as I climbed; the higher I went the more the rolling and pitching of the ship grew on me, so that when at last I dragged myself out on deck it was no wonder to find the weather very blusterous and with, ever and anon, clouds of white spray lashing aboard out of the hissing dark with much wind that piped shrill and high in cordage and rigging.
Being sheltered by the high bulwark hard beside the quarter-deck ladder, I leaned awhile to stare about me and drink in great draughts of sweet, clean air, so that in a little my head grew easier and the heaviness passed from me. Ever and anon the moon peeped through wrack of flying cloud, by whose pale beam I caught glimpses of bellying sails towering aloft with their indefinable mass of gear and rigging, and the heel and lift of her looming forecastle as the stately vessel rose to the heaving seas or plunged in a white smother of foam.
"She rides well, Mart'n!" roared Godby in my ear. "Aha, here's duck of a ship, pal!"
"Where's Adam?" I questioned.