A few minutes later the Pimple, who had been to his chest, outside the Sub's cabin, came in.
"Old Fletcher's blubbing like anything," he said. "I heard him."
"Get out of it, you little beast!" roared out the Sub. "Get out of the gun-room till dinnertime. Who told you to go sneaking round?" and Uncle Podger got in a well-judged kick which deposited the miserable Pimple on the deck outside.
The Orphan had the "middle" watch that night, so he turned into his hammock early, and was roughly shaken before it seemed to him that he had been to sleep a minute.
"Still raining?" he grunted to the corporal of the watch who had called him, as he climbed out and hunted round for his clothes.
"Raining and blowing 'orrible!"
He groped his way for'ard, only half awake, stumbling on the unsteady slippery deck-plates, barking his shins against a coaming, and bumping into the rest of the watch as they came up from the lighted mess deck like blind men. He "took over" from the snotty of the first watch, and, as soon as his sleepy eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, began pacing up and down across the narrow deck.
The gale still howled wildly through the fore shrouds, the wet signal halyards still flapped noisily against each other, and the rain still came driving under the bridge; but by this time the Achates had altered course and was running up-Channel, so had the seas on her starboard quarter, and though she was rolling heavily no spray came over her. That was one thing to be thankful for, the Orphan thought, as he looked into the utter blackness ahead of him.
Presently he leant against the conning-tower. But there was nothing for his eyes to rest on, and the screaming of the gale and the roaring of the rushing seas mingling together to make one continual, tumultuous clamour in his ears, lulled him nearly to sleep.
He started—he thought he was dancing with the little lady in white and blue—grinned to himself, and went up on the bridge to have a yarn with Bubbles, who was now the midshipman of the watch; tracked him by his laugh and his snorting noise; doubled up he was, at some yarn the Navigating Lieutenant was telling him—he always laughed long before a yarn came to an end!