“Shut up, you,” mumbled Hal.
“Sleep then,” said Bee disgustedly. “But when we collide with a—a lighthouse or a sunken wreck or—or something you’ll wish you’d kept awake, old Hal. You won’t have a ghost of a show at being rescued. You’ll be trampled under foot in the mad rush; and serve you right for sleeping on—er—on occasion like this. I think—mind you, I say I think—that we are e’en now about to collision with something.”
“Yes, Jack, there’s a boat straight ahead. Pull on your right oar.”
“Well,” said Bee admiringly, “you must be able to see in the dark, Miss Faith. I couldn’t have told whether that was a boat or a trolley car.”
“Oh, it isn’t really dark tonight,” said Faith. “The stars give a lot of light. Jack and I rowed across one night when—well, it was pretty dark, wasn’t it, Jack?”
“Black as your pocket. It was late in the Fall and there weren’t many lights showing. I thought the light on the pier on Gull Island was the light on Curtis’s coal wharf and ran plump into a bunch of spiles. We had quite a lot of fun getting across that time. The old dory leaked like a sieve and when she bumped she sprung a few new leaks and the first thing we knew our feet were in water up to our ankles. Sis had to bail all the way across.”
“Fun!” ejaculated Bee. “Is that your idea of a real good time? I suppose, then, if we ran into a rock and the boat sunk you and Miss Faith would laugh yourselves to death!”
“There’s the place we bumped,” said Jack, nodding toward the dark bulk of Gull Island. “We’re more than half-way over now.”
“Aren’t you tired?” asked Bee curiously. “How far can you row?”