"Morning, you're up early. Like a cup of tea?"
"Rather!" said Dick, who, like all bush boys, could drink tea a dozen times a day if opportunity occurred.
"Right-oh!" said the steward. "Wait half a jiff."
He dived into a passage, and presently reappeared with a cup of tea, the saucer encumbered with two biscuits and a banana.
"Like to take it up on deck?"
"Good idea," said Dick. "Thanks, awfully."
He mounted the stairs with care—the ship was lurching a little, and he was not used to carrying liquids on a floor that rose and fell beneath him. Still, he reached the deck, although with not more than a quarter of the tea in the saucer—he had prudently pocketed the biscuits and fruit—and sat down near the rail to dispose of his load. This over, he took back his cup and saucer and was greeted with astonished thanks by the bewildered steward, who said, "Lor', you could 'a lef' it up on deck—someone or other'd take it down."
Dick ran up again quickly. The wet decks glistened in the morning sunshine. A few of the men passengers were astir; some still in pyjamas; but no women were visible. An officer coming by gave him a pleasant greeting. He went forward until he could look down on the lower deck, where sailors were busy mopping, coiling ropes and generally stowing everything in ship-shape fashion for the uninterrupted run west. Land was still in sight on the starboard, a faint blue line of hills; ahead and to port there was nothing but the grey waste of heaving sea, brightened to blue wherever the sunlight sparkled on it. The air was full of sea birds, circling round the ship on the alert for any scrap of food that might be thrown over. As he watched a flock of gulls pounced, screaming, on the contents of a refuse tin from the galley, and fought over the spoil. To port, half a mile away, a little steamer wallowed along, her smoke making a black trail in her wake.
It was too cold to stand still, so Dick joined the steady march round the deck, taken by the few passengers who were about. Turning a corner presently he almost ran into someone coming rapidly in the opposite direction—Merle Warner, with her shock of hair flying in the wind, and her hands digging deeply into the pockets of a rough blue serge overcoat.
"Can't you look where you're goin', silly," she demanded.