"I'm to you now, boy! You're all right now. Boy, you're all right now."
The swelling water swelled with new impulse up the shingle, washed him where he knelt, ran beneath Mr. Wriford's face, and trickled in the stones beyond it.
Mr. Puddlebox looked back upon it over his shoulder. He could not see the table rock where he had lain. Only the pulpit rock upstood, and deep and black the channel on either hand between it and the walls of their inlet. He looked within the cave mouth before him and could see its inner face. It was no more than a shallow hollowing by the sea. He looked upwards and saw the cliff towering into the night, overhanging as it mounted.
He passed his tongue about his lips.
CHAPTER V
WATER THAT BREAKS AND ROARS
I
In a very little while Mr. Puddlebox had dragged Mr. Wriford the three paces that gave them the mouth of the cave and had sat him upright there, his back against the cliff. Mr. Wriford had groaned while he was being moved, now he opened his eyes and looked at Mr. Puddlebox bending over him.
"Why, that's my loony!" cried Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully. The flicker of a smile rewarded him and from the moment of that smile he concealed, until they parted, the terrors that consumed him. "Why, that's my loony!" cried he, and went on one knee, smiling confidently in Mr. Wriford's face. "What's happened to you, boy?"
Mr. Wriford said weakly: "I've broken my legs. I think both my legs are broken." He indicated the pulpit rock with a motion of his head. "I climbed up there. Then I thought I'd jump down. Very high and rocky underneath, but I thought of it, and so I did it. I didn't land properly. I twisted my legs."