Mr Tompkins’s chagrin when this was effected was delightful to Tom, although he suffered from it, as the first mate, ascribing to his suggestion the credit of the new arrangement, vented his spite on him accordingly, and tried to make his duties as difficult for him as he could.
Nothing was seen further all that day, or the next night, of the felucca, although Tom never went below for a single watch even when his time for relief came—except for meals, of course—remaining on deck and keeping a sharp lookout towards every point of the compass, not only during his own time of duty but in that of the chief mate as well, despite the latter’s broad hints and insulting remarks that his absence would be more agreeable than his company. So, when the following day likewise passed without any reappearance of the suspicious stranger, both the lads began to think that their fear of being attacked by pirates was only a chimera, founded, as the captain had said, on Mohammed’s fabulous narrative; for Charley had been quite as nervous in the matter as Tom, and had shared his anxious watch with him all through ever since he had recognised the Greek on board the felucca.
Accordingly, the two, their apprehensions quite allayed, turned in together again on the third night the Muscadine was at sea, without any greater anticipation of something being about to happen, beyond the usual disagreeables of a sailor’s life, than they had the first evening after they left port—both quitting the deck about just the same time as then, too, when Tom was relieved by the first mate at six bells.
“Isn’t that a sail out there, Charley, right in the wind’s-eye?” said Tom as they turned to descend the companion-stairs, pointing to what looked like a white speck, far-away off in the direction he had named.
“A sail be hanged!” exclaimed Charley. “I never saw such a fellow in my life. You are like Don Quixote, who fancied every windmill a giant. I believe that blessed felucca haunts you in your sleep!”
“No, really, Charley, I didn’t think it was her. I meant another sort of sail. But I was mistaken, for I can see nothing now.”
“That’s always the way with you, Tom. It strikes me that all your sails are sells.”
At which brilliant piece of wit on Charley’s part both lads laughed so loudly that Mr Tomkins thought they were making fun at his expense, and it was gall and wormwood to him as he paced the deck on the windward side; and “the two inseparables,” as Captain Harding dubbed them, then turned in without any further palaver save a brief “good-night,” being soon wafted happily into the land of dreams.
A tolerably fast vessel for her size, and in fair sailing trim, as she was only half-loaded—being unable to complete her cargo at Beyrout, whence her going out of her way, as it were, to Smyrna from thence—the Muscadine, with the good breeze she had at starting, which had subsequently increased into a very favourable wind, strong, but not too strong to prevent her carrying all plain sail, had made such use of her legs, as sailors say, that she had by this time run over 500 miles from her point of departure, and before morning the captain expected they would sight the southernmost point of Rhodes, and be able to enter the channel between that island and Scarpanto.
He had therefore issued strict injunctions about a sharp lookout being kept forward, stationing one of the English crew in each watch there for that purpose—as he said he didn’t believe in any foreigner’s eyesight where a ship was concerned—just when he was leaving the deck, which was shortly before Tom and Charley, giving orders at the same time that he should be called as soon as anything was perceived; and these instructions Tom, as the second officer, passed on, as in duty bound, to Mr Tompkins when he relieved him, the first mate receiving them, as he now invariably did any statement from his junior, with a characteristic grunt!