“All right, lookout-man,” he hailed back, after a portentous yawn. “It’s probably the morning breeze blowing the fog off the land that you see. Tell me, a–a–ah! When you are able to make it out more clearly, a–a–ah!”
And, he almost yawned himself out of his boots as he gave utterance to the last word.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Boarding the Slave Dhow.
“On deck, there!” shouted out the lookout-man again, almost before the sound of Lieutenant Dabchick’s last yawn had died away in the distance, like a groan or its echo. “There’s a whole fleet o’ dhows a-creeping up under the lee of the land and running before the wind to the north’ard, sir!”
This stopped Mr Dabchick’s yawns and made him open his sleepy eyes pretty wide, I can tell you!
“A fleet of dhows, lookout-man!” he cried, fully awake at last, not only in his own person, but as regarded the responsibility attaching to him should he unhappily let our prey escape and so foil his captain’s carefully arranged plan. “Are you certain, Adams?”
“Not a doubt of it, sir,” replied the captain of the foretop, in an assured tone that expressed his confidence in his own statement. “They’re Arab dhows sure enough, sir. One—two—three; and, ay, there is two more on ’em jist rounding the p’int—that makes five on ’em, sir, all bearing to the north as fast as they can go, with slack sheets and the breeze dead astern, which they are bringing up with them. They’re right off our weather beam, now, sir.”