He half arose in his birth, but the motion of the vessel and a slight feeling of dizziness compelled him to resume a recumbent position.
“I must be dreaming,” thought Dodger. “It’s very queer. I am dreaming I am at sea. I suppose that explains it.”
He listened and heard the swish of the waters as they beat against the sides of the vessel.
He noted the pitching of the ship, and there was an unsteady feeling in his head, such as those who have gone to sea will readily recall.
Dodger became more and more bewildered.
“If it’s a dream, it’s the most real dream I ever had,” he said to himself.
“This seems like a ship’s cabin,” he continued, looking about him. “I think if I got up I should be seasick. I wonder if people ever get seasick in dreams?”
There was another pitch, and Dodger instinctively clung to the edge of his berth, to save himself from being thrown out.
“Let me see,” he said, trying to collect his scattered recollection. “I went to sleep in a house uptown—a house to which Curtis Waring lured me, and then made me a prisoner. The house was somewhere near One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Now it seems as if I was on board a ship. How could I get here? I wish somebody would come in that I could ask.”
As no one came in, Dodger got out of the berth, and tried to stand on the cabin floor.