But if there was any answer he didn’t hear it, for he fell asleep again immediately. In the morning, in the act of yawning and stretching his arms over his head, he recollected the noise in the night and looked inquiringly at Tom’s bunk. But it hadn’t been slept in. Bob puzzled over this fact for a moment. Then——
“How the dickens do I know?” asked Dan, sitting up in his berth.
“Didn’t he come back last night? I heard some one and I thought sure it was Tommy.”
“That was me,” said Nelson, opening his eyes. “You asked if it was Tommy and I said No. I was closing the ports. The wind and rain were just drowning me out.”
“Rain!” exclaimed Bob and Dan simultaneously. Then——
“Gee, what a storm!” muttered Dan, as he subsided after a glance through the nearest port. “I see where we stay in New London for a day or two.”
“Well,” said Bob philosophically, “it’s better to be here than tied up in some little old cove along the Sound. We can go ashore, at least.”
“That’s so,” agreed Dan. “And maybe there’ll be another show at the theater.”
During the night a heavy gale from the southwest had sprung up and now the rain was beating fiercely against the cabin sides and playing a tattoo on the roof. There was a stiff wind behind it and the waves were running high. Under the double assault the _Vagabond_ was heaving at her lines and grinding dismally against the pier. Nelson, pulled on his oilskins and hurried out to see that the fenders were in place. In a minute he was back, wet and glistening.
“It’s a peach of a storm, all right,” he said, shedding his oilskins. “The old sailors along the Cape used to tell us that a storm from the southeast was good for three days and one from the southwest was soon over. But it doesn’t look like it now.”
It was so dark in the cabin that when Bob brought the breakfast to the table it was necessary to light the lamps in order to distinguish the scrambled eggs from the hashed brown potatoes. But it was very jolly to sit there with the fragrant steam from the coffee cup curling up past their noses and hear the rain rattle and sweep against the boat and see it go trickling down the port lights. Barry sat on the edge of a bunk and stared solicitously at Dan every time the latter raised his fork to his mouth. Dan would never feed him at table, but all of the others did so whenever they thought they would be undetected. Bob believed he saw a chance to transfer a half a slice of bread and butter from his plate to Barry’s mouth, but Dan interposed a quick hand and the bread went flying across the cabin to land face downward on Tom’s pillow.