The Doctor carried the listening-tank to a porthole, opened it and emptied the tank into the sea. "Good-bye!" he murmured as a faint splash reached us from without.
I dropped my pencil on the table and leaned back with a sigh. My fingers were so stiff with writers' cramp that I felt as though I should never be able to open my hand again. But I, at least, had had a night's sleep. As for the poor Doctor, he was so weary that he had hardly put the tank back upon the table and dropped into a chair, when his eyes closed and he began to snore.
In the passage outside Polynesia scratched angrily at the door. I rose and let her in.
"A nice state of affairs!" she stormed. "What sort of a ship is this? There's that colored man upstairs asleep under the wheel; the Doctor asleep down here; and you making pot-hooks in a copy-book with a pencil! Expect the ship to steer herself to Brazil? We're just drifting around the sea like an empty bottle--and a week behind time as it is. What's happened to you all?"
She was so angry that her voice rose to a scream. But it would have taken more than that to wake the Doctor.
I put the note-book carefully in a drawer and went on deck to take the wheel.