“So I do; although, between the flashes, the night is dark enough, I can make out objects as well as I ever could.”
Though the gale continued, the thunderstorm blew over before midnight, and Billy, with the rest of the watch below, turned in. The next evening he found to his infinite satisfaction that his moon blindness no longer existed, and the doctor and all who pretended to any scientific knowledge, were of opinion that it had been cured by the electric fluid, which had glanced across his face.
“Another half-inch, however, and we might have had a different tale to tell of you,” observed the doctor.
“How so?” inquired Billy.
“Why, that you would have been turned into a piece of charcoal, instead of being restored to sight. There is something to think of, my boy, for the rest of your days.”
A look-out was kept for the Orion. Although the gale had ceased, and the horizon was clear, she was nowhere to be seen.
“I hope they’ve not been after killing a pig aboard,” remarked Pat. “They may not get off so cheap as we have.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tim Nolan.
“Why, for what we can tell, one of them zig-zag flashes may have struck her, and sent her down to Davy’s locker, or fired her magazine and blown her up sky high.”
“I hope that’s not Captain Adair’s fate,” observed Jerry Bird. “I’ve sailed with him many a day, and a better officer and a nicer gentleman does not command one of her Majesty’s ships. When I have been on shore with him, he has been kind and friendly like, and looked after the interests of his men, seeing that they have plenty of grub when it was to be got. Never made us work when there was no necessity for it, and I should be sorry indeed if any harm happened to him.”