Bob kept up his spirits so far as to make fun of this, chaffing his companion and saying that he preferred the way in which the Captain served up his soles to Dick’s!
“Ah,” said the other in reply, “I wonder what the good Cap’en ’ud think if he seed us now?”
“Why, that we were two unfortunate fellows!” replied Bob, becoming grave again in an instant. “I’m sure he would pity us from the bottom of his heart!”
Thus the long day wore on; although, it seemed as if it would never end!
However, when night came round again, they wished they had yet the day; it was so dark, so dreary, so eerie, pitching and rolling about there, carried hither and thither as the tide listed, with never a vista of the wished-for land, with never a sound but the sobbing sea.
Yet, it was wonderful how the boys encouraged each other to bear up and be hopeful, in spite of everything.
Whenever, in the early morning previously and during the day in their respective sufferings, one or the other grew despondent Dick cheered Bob and Bob cheered Dick, as the case might be.
Then, somehow or other, the principal portion of the cheering-up work was borne by Dick; the very brightness and look of everything, even while he noticed them, seeming to have the effect of depressing Bob’s spirits by some unknown association or connection with those at home.
At night, however, it was Bob’s turn to sustain the drooping courage of Dick, who, like most country-bred lads, was intensely superstitious, fancying the darkness to swarm with ghosts and goblins, who were on the watch to devour him; the boy, while bearing up bravely against palpable privations and open dangers, staring them in the face, from which grown men would have quailed, was now affected by silly fears which a baby would have blushed to own!
All through the wearisome hours of the dragging night, whose minutes were as iron and hours like lead, he was constantly starting up in nervous terror; the moan of the sea, the cry of some belated sea-gull, the plunge of a fish in the water, nay even the creaking of the boat’s own timbers, with each and all of which Dick was perfectly familiar, alike arousing his frenzied alarm.