"Dat w'at it is, hit's de voodoo w'at's got into you-all's stummicks," he declared. "Dey ain't no use o' my cookin' no more till you is busted wid it."
That hot lazy sun finally dipped down west, and from then on, every candle or firefly on shore had us on the jump. Grant Norris was the worst of the bunch. At ten o'clock he broke loose.
"Those young skunks!" he said. "Won't I give them a piece of my mind! They might give us a word. No sense in keeping mum like this."
At midnight all but Norris gave it up and turned in. He said he wouldn't trust the watch, and anyway there wasn't any sleep in him.
I hadn't any more than got two winks of my first beauty sleep, than something had me by the scruff, and bounced me out of my bunk onto the floor. It was worse than the nightmare.
I was kneading the cobwebs of fairyland out of my eyes, and I heard Norris saying:
"Pile up on deck you sleepy-head! Wayne's talking to you."
I "piled up" on deck; and there, way back in the hills, ever so far away, I saw the flashing of a beacon light. A long flash, a short one, another long, a short. That's C. Three long ones—O. And so on. "Come ask for Brill. Come ask for Brill," the message went.
Norris brought the lamp with the strong reflector, and I flashed back an answer. But they evidently didn't see our smaller light, for they continued with their—"Come, ask for Brill. Come ask for Brill."
Now I can't explain just how, but I knew from the way the flashes were given that it wasn't Wayne, but Robert, who was doing the signalling. Then they were not together up there, for Wayne always did that job.