“Sort of sleepy,” he said.  The wind murmuring at the open window of the state-room had a drowsy sound, and—­and Wort’s head gave a sudden fall.  He opened his eyes, and said, “This won’t do; I mustn’t go to sleep,” But the wind continued to hum its drowsy tune as if saying, “Go to sleep, go to sleep, tired boy, tired boy; there, there!” Wort’s head rose and fell several times, and each time he made a remonstrance.  But the remonstrances were feebler one after the other, his eyes refused to open, and there in the captain’s state-room was a boy fast asleep!

It was the latter part of the afternoon, and one of the men at work on the new vessel came to Wort’s father, and said, “Cap’n, shall we let the schooner lie off in the stream to-night, or do you take her to her wharf?”

“No chance for her at the wharf, and she must stay here till Monday, and I don’t think any one need stay with her and watch.  She is so heavily anchored she can’t very well run away.  We will all leave.  But where is my boy?”

“I think, cap’n, I see a boy like him going off with your brother.”

“All right.  My brother Nathan was here, and he will look after Wort.  Now we will go.”

When Skipper Wentworth reached home his wife told him that “Nathan” had said something about taking Wort home with him to spend a day or two at his farm, three miles away.

“Then Wort has gone with Nathan, wife?”

“I think he must have, as he has not come home.”

“He is with Nathan.  All right.”

The good folks went to bed, and nobody told them where Wort was.  The little waves rippling about the schooner may have known, and a bright, inquisitive star looking in at the cabin window may have known, but neither wave nor star told the secret.  Toward morning Wort woke up.  Where was he?  He put out his hands expecting to feel the soft feather pillow that Mother Wentworth daily laid upon his bed.  It was only a hard board that he felt above him and back of him.  Where was he?  He rubbed his eyes wide open, and little by little it came to him that he was in the cabin of the schooner.  What if the vessel should break away from her moorings and drift off to sea?  What if it had gone already, and this craft with a crew of one were actually on her voyage?  His heart thumped hard in his fright.  He crawled out of the cabin, making his way along as well as he could over pieces of board, running into a carpenter’s saw-horse provokingly left in the door-way, and stroking his legs, he stepped outside.  The wind from the water swept cool across the vessel.  Where was he?  Adrift?  He turned toward the sea.  The light at Simes Badger’s lighthouse was still blazing, but far away above the dark, angry sea, there was a faint glow in the heavens.

“Good!” thought Wort.  “Father’s vessel hasn’t broke loose, for there is the light-house where it was yesterday, and that’s morning over there.  She’s coming!”