at's so, matey, and their games are over again. You'll jyne us,
won't you?"

"I? Join you?" faltered the cook, looking across at me; "here, what are
you going to do?"

"Let the lads out again. It's their turn now."

And just then the men in the forecastle finished a chorus and began to
cheer.

"I shall wake up from this dream directly," I remember thinking, but I
did not, for all was black, and I was in the deepest sleep that I ever
had in my long life.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

Hot! So hot that I could hardly breathe, and so dark that I could not
see across the cabin. My head ached, and I was terribly sleepy, with a
heavy, unsatisfied drowsiness, which kept me from stirring, though I
longed to get out of my cot and go and open the window, and at the same
time have a good drink from the water-bottle.

I was lying on my brick, and there was the impression upon me that I had
been having bad dreams, during the passing of which I had been in great
trouble of some kind, but what that trouble was I could not tell; and as
soon as I tried to think, my brain felt as if it was hot and dry, and
rolling slowly from side to side of my skull.

I was very uncomfortable and moved a little, but it made my head throb
so that I was glad to lie still again and wait till the throbbing grew
less violent.

"It all comes of sleeping in a cabin in these hot latitudes with the
window closed. Mr Frewen ought to know better," I thought, "being a
doctor. I'll tell him of it as soon as he wakes."

This is how I mused, thinking all the time how foolish I was not to get
up and open the window, but still feeling no more ready to cool the
stifling air of the cabin.

"What makes men snore so?" I thought then, and began to wonder how it
was that so gentlemanly a man as the doctor should make such a noise in
his sleep. I had never heard him do so before. As a rule he lay down,
closed his eyes, and went off fast, breathing as softly as a baby till
he woke in the morning. Now his breathing was what doctors call
stertorous, heavy and oppressed.

"Oh, how I wish he would wake up and open the window!" I thought; but
he did not wake up nor cease breathing so heavily, and I lay thinking
about coming to bed on the previous night. That is to say, I lay trying
to think about coming to bed, for I could not recall anything. I had
some dreamy notion of its having been my watch; but whether I had taken
it, or whether it was yet to come and