We who were on the poop also went below soon afterwards to the cabin, where we found that Jake had cleared out all the debris and arranged the place so neatly that one would scarcely have imagined it had ever been in the state of confusion we noticed when first entering it.
Our bunks, too, were all arranged comfortably, with dry blankets spread in each; and I know that I, for one, was so glad to lie down on anything like a bed again after the two nights’ exposure outside the ship, that I dropped off to sleep the moment I turned into my cot—the remark the captain had made about our being now thirteen in number, or a “baker’s dozen,” running in my head as a refrain to my dreams, although my rest was not in any way disturbed. The baker’s dozen, however, made me think of bread on my waking up in the morning; for, I felt more hungry then than on the previous day, when the first morsel of food I tasted almost choked me.
Chapter Eighteen.
We beat up for the Azores.
It was early dawn when the unwonted sound of feet bustling about over my head on the deck, which I had not heard now it seemed for an unconscionable length of time, roused me up to the realisation of our having at last been relieved from our terrible peril and the privations we had suffered whilst the ship was on her beam-ends.
Oh, what joy it was to think we were all safe on board the Josephine again!
Hunger, one of the most painful of the sufferings we had experienced, and indeed the one which I felt the most of any, was now banished completely to the realms of the past; and I had presently trustworthy evidence of this, Jake appearing at the door of my cabin and bringing in a steaming bowl of coffee and some biscuits, as a sort of “little breakfast” before the larger and more substantial meal was ready—the galley being already fixed up properly and Cuffee having resumed his culinary duties with all his paraphernalia in train.
When I got out on the poop, I noticed that the hands had not been idle while I was sleeping, so much already having been accomplished in the way of restoring the ship to an effective condition that the men must have set to work long before daylight, I was certain.