Читать книгу Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice онлайн

40 страница из 71

“There’s yours,” gruffly said Johnson, indicating a pot hooked on to the side of a bunk; and Frank gratefully seized it as well as a biscuit out of the box.

It was not like anything he had drunk before which he could say was at all nice, but it was boiling hot and sweet, sending quite a glow through his shaking body. The biscuit was flinty, but Frank’s teeth were good, and besides he was savagely hungry, so that he really found himself enjoying this impromptu meal, and quite forgot that he was sitting in the house which had been such a place of horror to him. For the wind having changed, there was a current of pure air blowing through it, and most of its foulness had been swept away. As far as Frank was concerned, the worst of his probation was over.

By the time he had eaten his biscuit and finished his coffee he felt a different being, and when Johnson said, “You’d better get aft, it’s nearly three bells,” he was ready, as he felt, to face anything. So he hurried aft to his place on the poop and ventured to walk about a bit in spite of the motion of the ship, the mate saying nothing to him until four bells.