‘What shocking weather, to be sure!’ was all he said.
I put my glass of grog into the worthy little creature’s hand, and he thanked me with one of his long-faced, wistful looks, then applied the tumbler to his mouth and emptied it.
But to end all this: at three o’clock in the morning there was a sensible decrease in the gale. I had fallen asleep in the cuddy, and waking at that hour, and finding but one lamp dimly burning, and the interior deserted, I worked my way to the hatch, groped along to my cabin, and tumbled into my bunk, where I slept soundly till half-past eight. The sun was shining when I opened my eyes: the ship was plunging and rolling, but easily, and in a floating, launching manner, that proved her to be sailing along with the wind aft. Colledge was seated in his bunk with his legs over the edge, gazing at me meditatively.
‘Awake?’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘Fine weather this morning, Dugdale. But preserve us, what a night we’ve come through, hey? D’ye remember talking of the fun of a voyage? Yesterday was a humorous time certainly.’
I sprang out of bed. ‘Patience, my friend, patience!’ said I; ‘this trip will end, like everything else in our world.’
‘Ay, at the bottom of the sea, for all one is to know,’ he grumbled. ‘A rod of land before twenty thousand acres of shipboard, say I. By the way, you and Miss Temple looked very happy in each other’s company when I peeped out of the hatch yesterday to see what had become of her, at her aunt’s request.’
‘You should have risen through the deck a little earlier,’ said I. ‘Yon would have found her hanging.’
‘Hanging!’ he cried.