Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/183

Rh the ﬁrst thing that came to his mind:

But he did not ﬁnish. For the wind's voice was stronger, and the waves drowned the little tune, so lonely there in the midst of the empty water. Kirk cried himself to sleep, after all.

He could not even tell when the night gave way to cold day-break, for the fog cloaked everything from the sun's waking warmth. It might have been a week or a month that he had drifted on in the Flying Dutchman—it certainly seemed as long as a month. But he had eaten only two biscuits and was not yet starved, so he knew that it could not be even so much as a week. But he did not try to sing now. He was too cold, and he was very thirsty. He crouched under the tarpaulin, and presently he ate another hardtack biscuit. He could not hear the lighthouse fog-signal at all, now, and the waves were much bigger under the boat. They lifted her up, swung her motionless for a moment, and then let her slide giddily into the trough of another sea.