By the time we were on our homeward voyage, the sentences had become very complex, and it seemed probable that Alister's ambition to take part in a "two-handed crack" in French with his teacher, before the shamrock fell to pieces, would be realized.
"What he has learnt is wonderful, I can tell ye," said Dennis to me, "but his accent's horrid! And we'd get on faster than we do if he didn't argue every step we go, though he doesn't know a word that I've not taught him." But far funnier than Alister's corrections of his teacher, was a curious jealousy which the boatswain had of the Scotch lad's new accomplishment.
We could not quite make out the grounds of it, except that the boatswain himself had learned one or two words of what he called _parly voo_ when he was in service at the boys' school, and he was jealously careful of the importance which his shreds and scraps of education gave him in the eyes of the ordinary uneducated seaman.

With Dennis and me he was uniformly friendly, and he was a most entertaining companion.
Owing to head winds, our passage was longer than the average.

A strange thing happened towards the end of it.

We had turned in for sleep one night, when I woke to the consciousness that Dennis had got out of his berth, and was climbing past mine, but I was so sleepy that I did not speak, and was only sure that it was not a dream, when Alister and I went on deck for the next watch, and found Dennis walking up and down in the morning mist.
"Have you had no sleep ?" I asked, for his face looked haggard.
"I couldn't.

For dreaming," he said, awkwardly.
I laughed at him.
"What have you been dreaming about ?" "Don't laugh, Jack.