“Nonsense!” said Captain Sam, with a grin. “You’re a bit shaken up, but you’ll feel better by and by. Just go into the cabin and lie down a little while. That may make you feel better.”
Perhaps it had been so many years since Captain Sam had experienced the awful misery of seasickness that he did not realize that the worst thing the colonel could do was to go down into the dark, damp, musty-smelling cabin of the old fishing-sloop. Perhaps he really did think that the colonel would feel better for it. But whatever his motive was, it had a sudden and deadly effect on Colonel Witham. Indeed, he had scarcely stuck his head into the stuffy cabin, had certainly no more than gotten fully within, before he staggered out again, with an agonized expression on his face, and sank, limp and shivering, to a seat, with his head over the rail.
“Oh! Oh!” he groaned. “I think I’m going to die. I’m awfully sick; never felt so bad in all my life. Can’t you put me ashore, Captain Sam—anywhere, anywhere? I don’t care where, even if it is a deserted island. I’d wait there a week if I could only get on shore.” And the colonel groaned and shivered.
It was obvious there was no way of going ashore, however, as they were some miles distant from it. There was nothing for the unhappy colonel to do but to make the best—or the worst—of it.
“Cheer up, colonel,” said Captain Sam, pulling out the stub of a black clay pipe, lighting it, and puffing away enjoyably. “I’ve seen ’em just as sick as you are one hour, and chipper enough to eat raw pork and climb the mast the next. You will be feeling fine before long,—won’t he, squire?”
But as the squire evidently had his doubts in the matter, owing particularly to the fact that he was not too much at ease himself, his response was rather faint; and the captain was left to the entertainment of his own society. He enjoyed himself for the next hour or two with a sort of monologue, in which he proceeded to analyze audibly the relative chances of the little yacht ahead and the Nancy Jane.
“They are doing surprisingly well for a small craft in windward work,” he muttered. “They handle her well. Still, the Nancy Jane is eating up on them. I say about sundown we shall be able to run alongside—Hulloa! If they are not changing their course to run down the Little Reach! Thought they knew better than that. Why, it’s what they call a ‘blind alley’ in the cities. Well, I’m surprised. They know the bay pretty well, too; and, only to think, they go to running in to a thoroughfare which really is nothing more than a long cove. They’ll fetch up at the end of it in an hour or two, and there’s no way out.”
The captain’s voice almost seemed to express disappointment that the chase should end so tamely.
“Colonel,” he cried. “Squire. It will be all over in a few hours now. They’re running into a trap.”
But the colonel and the squire were beyond interest in the pursuit.