The next instant a multitude of dazzling lights flashed before his eyes, and without a cry he pitched head-long on his face.
* * * * *
"Jack, old thing!" shouted Beverley, throwing back his blankets and jumping from his cot. "What's the time? Why, it's eight bells! Who's turn is it to light the stove this morning?"
Receiving no reply from the adjoining cabin, Bobby laid hold of a sponge, dipped it in the water-jug, and made his way softly to Villiers' berth. He opened the door and looked in.
"What's he doing?" he thought in wonderment, for the cot had not been slept in. The lamp was still alight, but on the point of burning itself out. It was an oil-lamp, for the electric-lighting arrangements were not yet in working order. The table was littered with books, two of them open, while a pipe, with a small heap of white ash, lay upon the open page of the Nautical Almanac.
"I believe he's been swotting all night, the mouldy old book-worm," thought Beverley. "Now he's gone to the bathroom to shove his heated brow in cold water."
But the bathroom was empty. A hurried search brought no sign of his chum—nor of the dog.
Fearful of his own surmises, Bobby looked over the side. Almost the first thing he noticed was the dead body of Tommy left stranded on the mud by the falling tide, but of Villiers not a trace.
Even as he looked at the unfortunate Aberdeen, a swell threshed sullenly against the evil-smelling mud and lifted the dog's body a couple of feet or so nearer the weed-covered piles. A steamer had just passed—a tramp, outward bound, with the name Zug—Malmo, on her stumpy counter.