Читать книгу Frank Brown, Sea Apprentice онлайн

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A loud voice shouting in his ear, it seemed, “Seven bells; turn out here, you sleepers,” aroused Frank to a consciousness of his surroundings again, to his utmost astonishment, for he felt sure he had only been asleep five minutes.

As he awoke he heard Johnson muttering, “Blowin’ a gale o’ wind now, I should think, by the way she’s kicking about, the old beast. Here, Frank, go an’ get the dinner an’ hurry up, it’ll be all hands directly, I can see.”

Frank scrambled out of his bunk, dragged his cap on, and staggered out on deck, to be met as he did so by a heavy spray which drenched him and nearly knocked him down. He gasped and clutched at the side of the house, but did not go back, although he felt a little bit alarmed. He held on his way to the galley, however, and the cook handed him two tin dishes, one with a piece of fat boiled pork in it that made his gorge rise as he looked at it, and the other with some plain pea-soup.

Now he ought to have known better than to have attempted to carry both dishes, having no hand left to hold on with. But he started and got half-way towards his house, when the ship gave a combined roll and pitch that shot him off his legs, and hurled him along the deck as helpless as a dead thing. He landed in the scuppers at the lee side of the vessel, which were a foaming torrent of water, and when he had scrambled to his feet again his dishes and their contents were several feet away.