We gulped out that we were too scared to go below, and felt better in the fresh air.
He held up his flickering lantern. "Eh! ye be sea-sick, be ye?" he said. "Well, ye do look powerful green, and be as wet as water. Just come along o' me; I'll stow you away out of 'arm."
He made us climb into the dinghy, which was in her crutches amidships, told us to lie down on some coils of rope and old canvas deck-cloths, and covered us with a tarpaulin.
We huddled up together and presently got warm again, and once we were warm and steamy we soon went to sleep.
It did not seem ten minutes later before we were roughly shaken by the shoulders, and there was Jones again.
"Turn out, you young gents; just show a leg there. It's gone seven bells (half-past seven), and it's time ye were rousing yourselves."
"Looking better the noo, ye are," he said, as we scrambled out from under the tarpaulin, feeling stiff all over but the sea-sickness gone; "and 'ere's a drop of hot cocoa for you and a bit of ship's biscuit—make men of you agin."
The sea had gone down considerably and it was broad daylight, the sun shining brightly, and Jones was smiling in a fatherly manner at us, with a couple of ship's biscuits in one hand and a bowl of steaming cocoa in the other.
Well, I should never have believed it possible. A few hours before I thought I should never want to touch a bit of food again, and now we both felt famished, and would have gulped down the lot between us, but Jones made us eat a bit of hard biscuit first, and then sandwich in a little cocoa, and so on till there was no more left of either.
"No, there ain't no more," said Jones, "and the Captain, 'e wants to see you both as soon as you've made yourselves respectable."