"Yes, if you like. I feel as if a nice row would do me good. I'm miserable. It's been a wretched voyage, bad weather all the time, and uncle cross, and the doctor wishing--I could see he was--nearly all the time, that he had never said a word about travelling; and now after longing to get to land we have been set down here." "Well," said Mark, "you are a nice fellow to try and cheer one up! I had just said a word or two about how wretched I was and how I felt, and then you begin quarrelling." CHAPTER FOUR. ALL IN TO BEGIN. The first words which saluted the boys were from Sir James: "Why don't you start your sun helmets?" "Not unpacked, father. You said--" "Oh, never mind what I said, boy, but get them out as soon as you can; a straw hat, as the doctor has just been saying, is no protection here; is it, doctor?" "Certainly not, sir; but we shall not feel the heat so much as soon as we leave here, for the country rises." "Pretty country!" said Sir James sarcastically. "But you boys, who was that rough looking sailor you picked up with?" "We didn't pick up with him, father," said Mark sourly. "What, sir! Don't tell me that! I distinctly saw you with him out of the window." "He picked up with us, father--" began Mark; and then he caught the doctor's eye and changed his lone, saying hastily, "He was a poor fellow in distress, father." Here Mark stopped short, for he had returned to the hotel with the full intention of pleading the poor invalid's cause, and he felt that he had commenced by speaking in a way that must increase his father's irritation, for Sir James had been quite upset by the heat of the place and the discomforts of the miserable hotel to which he had been directed when on board the liner as being the best in the port. He literally glared at his son, and Mark shrank and turned to look at the doctor. Sir James waited till he saw his son lower his eyes, when he too turned to the doctor and looked at him fiercely, the two men exchanging a long questioning glance. It was a painful silence, but there was virtue in it, for when it was broken it was by Sir James, who said after drawing a deep breath, "See if you can open that window a little farther, Mark. This place feels like an oven." Mark sprang to his feet and drew the window a little forward, and then pushed it outward again, but only back in its former place. "Hah! That's better, my boy," said his father, quite cheerfully. "Why, doctor, what a blessing a bucketful of ice would be here--if it wasn't lukewarm, Dean, eh?" The boy addressed tried to laugh at his uncle's joke, but the production sounded hollow, and the silence recommenced, the doctor cudgelling his brains the while for something to say that should thoroughly change the conversation; but he cudgelled in vain.