The Lost Middy Part 61

"Well, aren't you going to have another try? It's lovely. Only wants plenty of perseverance."

"Not I," replied Aleck. "You don't seem to have got on so very well."

"Got on as well as you did," snarled the middy. "Ugh! It was horrid.

Just as if, when I felt that I could hold my breath no longer, I was suddenly seized and sucked into a great sink-hole, only the water was running up instead of down."

"Yes, that's just how I felt," said Aleck.

"You couldn't have felt so bad as I did," said the lad, irritably and speaking in the most inconsistent way. "I got my head rasped, too, against the stones overhead, and it's bleeding fast. Look at it, will you?"

Aleck examined the place, after opening the door of the lanthorn.

"It isn't bleeding," he said.

"Don't talk nonsense," cried the middy, irritably. "It smarts horribly, and I can feel the blood trickling down the back of my neck."

"That's water out of your hair."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, certain. I can't even see a mark on your head."

"Well, there ought to be," grumbled the lad. "Aren't you going to have another try?"

"No. Are you?"

"Not if I know it," replied the middy. "Once is quite enough for a trip of that kind."

"I don't think it's possible to get out by swimming."

"Well, it doesn't seem like it; but the smugglers get in."

"Yes, at certain times."

"Then this is an uncertain time, I suppose!" said the middy, beginning to dress.

"Hadn't we better get round and have a good rub with a bit of sail?"

asked Aleck.

"No; we can't carry our clothes without getting them wet, and if we don't take them it means coming all the way round here again. Let's dress as we are; the salt water will soon dry."

"Very well," said Aleck, and he followed his companion's example with much satisfaction to his feelings, listening the while to the middy's plaints and grumblings, for he had been under water long enough to make him feel something like resuscitated people, exceedingly discontented and ill-humoured.

Every now and then he burst out with some disagreeable remark. One minute it was against his s.h.i.+rt for sticking to his wet back; another time it was at Aleck for getting on so fast with his dressing consequent upon his being drier; and then he began to abuse Eben Megg.

"A beast; that's what he is. It's just as bad as murdering us with a knife or chopper, that it is."

They were dressed at something like the same time, Aleck having achieved his task quietly, the middy with a sort of accompaniment of grumbles and unpleasant remarks.

"There," he said, at last; "that seems to have done me a lot of good.

There's nothing like a good growl."

"Got rid of a lot of ill temper, eh?" said Aleck, smiling to himself.

"Yes, I suppose that's it. But, I say, we're not going to try that way out again! I say it's perfectly impossible."

"So do I," said Aleck.

"We should both have been drowned if it hadn't been for the rope."

"That we should, for a certainty," replied Aleck. "Well, there's nothing to be done but to wait patiently for the coming of that low tide when a boat could come in, as Eben Megg said, and as it's plain it does, or else all these stores couldn't have been brought in."

"And when it does come?" said the middy.

"We shall swim or wade out, of course," said Aleck.

"No, we shan't," grumbled the middy. "You see if it doesn't come in the night, when we're asleep."

"We must be too much on the look-out for that," said Aleck.

"It will not come all at once, but by degrees--lower and lower tides, till we get the one we want; and till then we shall have to be patient."

"Hark at him!" said the mids.h.i.+pman. "Who's to be patient at a time like this? Well, I'm beginning to feel warm and dry again; what do you say to getting back and having dinner, or whatever you like to call it? Oh, dear! Eating and drinking's bad enough on s.h.i.+p board, but it's all feasts and banquets compared to this."

"We must try to improve it," said Aleck. "I don't see why we shouldn't be able to catch fish."

"What? You don't suppose fish would be such scaly idiots as to come into a hole like this?"

"Perhaps not, but I believe they'd be sh.e.l.ly idiots enough. I shouldn't be a bit surprised, if we had a lobster or crab pot thrown out here, if we caught some fine ones."

"Set one, then," said the mids.h.i.+pman, sourly. "Perhaps there is one."

"Not likely," replied Aleck. "Never mind, let's make the best of what we've got and be thankful."

"No, that I won't," cried his companion. "I'll make the best of what we've got as much as you like, but I must draw the line somewhere--I won't be thankful."

"I will," said Aleck, good-temperedly; "thankful enough for both."

"Come on," said the mids.h.i.+pman, gruffly.

"Wait a moment till I've coiled up the line loosely. We may want it, and it must be hung up to dry."

This was done, and then after noting that the water was growing deeper in the direction of the sea entrance, the pair made their way right round by the head, stopped at the spring to have a hearty drink, and then pressed on, lanthorn in hand, to their resting-place, where, thoroughly upset by his adventure, the mids.h.i.+pman grumbled at everything till Aleck burst into a hearty laugh.

"Hallo!" cried his companion, eagerly; "let's have it. Got a bright idea as to how to get out?"

"No," said Aleck, "I was laughing at the comic way in which you keep on finding fault."