Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/307

 that matter, and in spite of the officer's promise, it is extremely doubtful if the Gyandotte would have slowed down to put him off. There was something wry determined and objective in the cruiser's manner this evening, and Nelson secretly believed that nothing short of a "moldie" was likely to stop her.

Mart accepted the situation at last and threw off dull care. Nelson had succeeded in getting a wireless back to the Q-4 explaining the cause of his desertion, and Mart declared that there was no more to be done. He was made welcome in Nelson's mess and ate a good supper and was given a hammock and a place to swing it. Tip was not much in evidence that evening, but they learned the next morning that he had slept most comfortably on an improvised bunk in the ward room. The cruiser met a heavy sea shortly before midnight and performed quite a few fancy steps between then and morning, and Mart, who should have been inured to any sort of discomfort, confessed the next day that the motion had been so strange to him that he had not slept much!

What the Gyandotte's original plan had been they never learned, for about nine that morning a messenger burst out of the wireless room and scurried to the bridge and the cruiser promptly 282