"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 some one was due to rouse me up soon, I could not tell. "It's all due to having such a headache," I thought, "and of course through this horrid air. Why doesn't he wake up and open the window?" How long that lasted I cannot tell, but it must have been for some time, during which my brain burned and my thoughts came in a horribly confused manner. I could hear the sounds on deck, and feel that the ship was careening over with the breeze, but these facts suggested nothing to me, and I must have been in quite a stupor, when I was roused by a voice saying angrily-- "Well, what is it?"