Jack and Charlie went rushing about closing portholes and shutting the hatch. “It is going to be one stuffy night; I never can sleep without plenty of air,” observed Charlie.
“Stop putting on airs, Charlie; you could sleep if there wasn’t any air in the whole universe, and you know it,” Jack corrected him.
Jane and Frances, overcome by giggles as usual, were trying to twist the ventilators in their room so the rain didn’t trickle in on them.
Mabel opened her stateroom door and peered through the crack. “Children and Daddy, I hate to be horrid, but you have simply got to stop smoking and go to bed and, if you go to sleep right away, you won’t miss not smoking. You see, without any air in the place, the smoke can’t get out and it all seems to come through my door some way. Anyhow, Ellen and I are simply gasping for breath.”
Moved by the pitiful picture of Ellen and Mabel clutching their soft throats and writhing on the floor in the agonies of suffocation, Charlie and Jack immediately put out their cigarettes.
“Greater love than this has no man, that he put out his cigarette to please a girl,” paraphrased Mr. Wing. “I am going up on deck to see if they are holding all right. I hear Breck up there and I can finish my cigar in all the wind and rain. Do you hear that, Mabel? We are going to have a lively night.”
Frances was almost asleep when Jane asked her, “Do you know whether Breck has a slicker or not? It must be horrid on deck in all this wet.”
“Why Jane, how funny! How should I know about what clothes Breck has? This is the first bad weather we have had.”
In the other cabin Ellen was saying to Mabel, “Ugh! listen to the wind, and the groaning of the rigging, and the plash, plash of the water slopping against the poor old ‘Boojum’s’ sides.”
Soon they were all asleep, the wind and rain unheeded. The steward snored with a series of really interesting variations, with such carrying powers that it was fortunate that all the seafarers were good sleepers. The waves had become choppy and hit the “Boojum’s” sides with angry little smacks. In spite of the lashings on the pilot wheel, the rudder thudded to and fro.