“You no like to eat more than you like fight. You whip three upper class boys, and not half try. When Clif Faraday say we do more things to third class fellows you roll your eyes and you lick your chop. You what American boys call one big bluff.”
The object of this arraignment laughed and gave an added spurt with his long ashen oar. The launch pitched and rolled in the seas, and steadily forced its way through the blackness.
Far astern twinkled the lights of the practice ship, seeming no larger than star points in the distance.
Overhead the darkness increased, the expanse of sea being banked in by gathering clouds. A breeze, cool and moist with a salty dampness, sprang up, giving a fleeting spray to the edge of the waves.
It was a strange experience to the young naval cadets, this tossing about in an open boat upon a heaving sea whose broad bosom sparkled and glowed with the sheen of phosphorescent lights.
There was something fascinating in it all, something so peculiarly attractive that all wished the signal of recall would be long in coming.
They had been aroused from slumber, the majority of them, and had plunged from the peacefulness of their hammocks into the midst of bustle and wild excitement. They had worked the guns in imitation of battle attack, then, as a fitting climax to all, here they were launched away from the ship with only a few frail planks between them and the remorseless ocean.
There was no thought of danger in their minds, however. It was all play—a jolly good game in which the boats, and the sea, and the freshening wind were the toys.
So they laid to the oars and forced the boats over the waves farther and still farther from the ship. And the breeze came in stronger puffs and the clouds gathered overhead in the darkness, and at last there came a time when the experienced officers in charge of the little flotilla received the same sudden shock as did Captain Brookes and his first lieutenant.
The shock was the icy blast. It sent the light crafts rolling, and called forth muttered exclamations of consternation from those who were experienced in the treachery of old ocean.