“Just leave me alone,” he moaned. “Oh-h, I wish I’d stayed home in Brooklyn! Do you think I’m going to die, Jack?”
“Not this trip, son,” laughed Jack. “Why, to-morrow you will feel like a two-year-old.”
“Yes, I will—not,” sputtered the invalid. “Gracious, I wish the ship would sink!”
After a while Sam sank into a sort of doze, and Jack, helmet on head and book in hand, sat at the instruments, keeping his vigil through the long night hours, while the storm shrieked and rioted about the ship.
The boy had been through too much rough weather on the Ajax to pay much attention to the storm. But as it increased in violence, it attracted even his attention. Every now and then a big sea would hit the ship with a thundering buffet that sent the spray flying as high as the loftily perched wireless station.
The wind, too, was blowing as if it meant to blow the ship out of the water. Every now and then there would come a lambent flash of lightning.
“It’s a Hatteras hummer for sure,” mused the boy.
The night wore on till the clock hands above the instruments pointed to twelve.
Above the howling and raging of the storm Jack could hear the big ship’s bell ring out the hour, and then, faint and indistinct, came the cry of the bow watch, “All’s well.” It was echoed boomingly from the bridge in the deep voice of the officer who had the watch.
“Well, nothing doing on that Endymion yet,” pondered Jack.