"How delightful this is!" murmured Faith early next morning, after
hours of storm-tossed uneasiness and dread. "Did you ever hear such
awful noises as we had all night? I'm almost afraid to look, for fear
everything is broken in here."
Hope, wide awake in an instant, returned,
"It is astonishingly still now, isn't it? I wonder what it means.
Even the engines have stopped--don't you hear?"
"How can I hear stillness?" laughed Faith. "I do perceive that they've
stopped, though. Yes, we must have come safely into port
somewhere--why, I wonder if it is Algiers?"
Hope rose up on one elbow, in some excitement, then gave a cry.
"Why, look at the cage--and where is Texas?" and Faith, rising also,
saw that the bottom had dropped out of the parrot's home and lay, with
its contents, but not its inmate, upon the floor amid some broken glass
and crockery.
"The storm has done it! Where can Texas be? Oh, I hope he is not
killed--"
"Good-morning!" croaked a voice at their very ears, and there, on the
thick nickel rim surrounding one of the portholes just above their
heads, perched Texas, dignified and imperturbable as ever.
Both girls broke into laughter, and tried to coax him down, but
unvailingly. He sat in a solemn quiet such as he seldom showed in his
cage, and clung to his slippery place with an air that said, "I have
known trouble and insecurity enough. Now that I have a foothold, poor
as it is, I mean to keep it," and though he returned to their coaxing
civil enough responses, he could not be tempted even to perch upon
Hope's white wrist, which was usually a proud privilege to his birdship.
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