When the Chilians had emptied their plates they clamored for more.
"We haven't any more," said Speake. "I cooked just enough and made an equal division all around."
Glennie explained to the Chilians, and once more they looked resentful; but, as before, their faces finally cleared and they resigned themselves to the situation. Matt emptied some of his food upon the plate of the injured Chilian, and without so much as a gracias (thank you) he devoured it with fierce celerity.
"We'll have to let them sleep in the steel room with you, Glennie," said Matt, when the meal was done and the eating utensils cleared away. "You've got a revolver and you can watch them. It may not be necessary to have a guard, but it will be just as well. Some one of us will keep awake in this room—Gaines can put in a two-hour watch, then call Speake. Speake can call Clackett, and Clackett can call Dick. I'll follow Dick, and by that time, I hope, it will be light enough so we can start through the strait. We must take advantage of every hour of daylight."
Matt's orders were immediately carried out. The four uninjured Chilians were shown into the room abaft the periscope chamber, and the injured man was left on the locker. Carl and Matt went down into the torpedo room, and Dick, Clackett, and Speake sprawled out in the tank room and motor room. Gaines, in pursuance of orders, went on guard in the periscope chamber.
Matt, being dog tired, was asleep almost as soon as he lay down on his blankets. Carl was tired himself, but he would have liked to talk a little, in spite of that. As Matt slipped off into slumber under his first remark, the Dutch boy had to go to sleep.
All was quiet in the boat, save for the ventilator fan humming softly in the motor room and sending fresh air throughout the steel hull.
No matter how wildly the gale howled over the surface of Possession Bay, thirty feet down in its depths all was quiet and serene.
When Matt was awakened, it was by a wild yell echoing weirdly through the vessel. At first he thought he had been dreaming, and he sat up, in the Stygian blackness of the torpedo room, and listened in bewilderment.
A moment more and he knew that what he had heard was not a dream. The boat, poised on the ocean bed, rocked with the frantic movements of some one in the periscope room.