Borne on the slight air from the eastward came a deep sound like the booming of a thousand giant drums.
"It doesn't look like any landing to-morrow," remarked Midshipman Seymour, wisely.
Just then the thin musical notes of a concertina drifted out from the forecastle.
"'Be it never so humble, there's no place like home,'"
chanted a voice.
"They have it there too," said Bobby Seymour to himself. "Why shouldn't they?"
But the song died away almost as soon as it had begun. In fact, it had been more like a deep-chested musical sigh than anything else.
"I wonder if we couldn't get the Kroomen to sing something jolly for us to-night?" suggested one of the larger midshipmen.
"I think the old man is too ill to stand much celebrating just now," spoke up another. "But I say, Remson, let's see if one of us can't get ashore to-morrow and get something fresh to eat. I'm sick of this old hooker, anyhow. Might as well be docked in Portsmouth, for all the good we're doing here."
This was fact. Watching for slave-traders under such restrictive orders from the government at Washington as precluded the faintest possibility of making a capture was far from exciting, and, besides, the goings on at home had produced a feeling of uneasiness on shipboard, for this was the troublous winter of '60-1.