"I'll even things up with you fellows if I get on deck again."
Only a few grunts answered him, and soon all were asleep.
They wakened, one by one, in the afternoon, to find the electric bulbs glowing, and the boat rolling heavily, while splashes of rain came in through the weather deadlights. These they closed; and, better humored after their sleep, and hungry as well, they attacked the barrel of bread and the water faucet.
"He's started the dynamo," remarked Riley, one of the engineers. "Why don't he start the engine and keep her head to the sea?"
"Because he knows too much," came a hoarse whisper, and they turned to Jenkins, who was sitting up, regarding them disapprovingly.
"Because he knows too much," he repeated, in the same hoarse whisper. "This is a so-called seagoing destroyer; but no one but a fool would buck one into a head sea; and that's what's coming, with a big blow, too. Remember the English boat that broke her back in the North Sea?"
"Hello, Jenkins—you alive?" answered one, and others asked of his health.
"I'm pretty near all right," he said to them. "I've been able to move and speak a little for twenty-four hours, but I saved my energy. I wasn't sure of myself, though, or I'd ha' nabbed Denman when he came in here for the pistols."
"Has he got them?" queried a few, and they examined the empty bunk.
"He sure has," they continued. "Got 'em all. Oh, we're in for it."