When the slight disturbance thus occasioned had quietened somewhat, the amateur sailors had leisure to observe that the sea had risen—had, in fact, developed a distinct chop. The breeze, also, had become appreciably harder.
"Jiminy, what do you call this?" asked Jack, as a lash of spray cut inboard, driven by the wind. "A giddy old gale, that's what it is!"
"Gale?" asked Patch superbly. "When you've been to sea as long as I have, my lad, you'll know better than to call a bit of a blow like this a gale."
"Well," sneered Jack, poking him in the ribs, "what's your name for it, then, my good admiral?"
"We sailors call this a stiff calm," said Patch, and the others yelled with laughter. "Yes, that's all it is to the man who knows the sea. You should just see a real gale, my boy! Why, I remember that in the Bay of Biscay I—"
He waved an arm grandly to emphasize the brilliant lie that he was evolving, but, at that moment, to a lurch of the boat, he slipped from his seat into the bottom-boards, where he lay floundering like a landed fish, in two or three inches of dirty water.
"Dear me!" said Jack, bending over him with a look of kindly concern. "Is that what you did in the Bay of Biscay? Poor fellow, what a time you must have gone through! And alive to tell the tale—alive and kicking," he added, as Patch's wildly-waving legs described in the air most of the problems of Euclid, together with some that Euclid never thought of.
"Ump! Ur!" said Patch, regaining his equilibrium with an effort.
"Don't say you've finished!" said Jack, clasping his hands in mock dismay. "You will do it again, won't you? I just loved that part where you stood on one ear—I thought that so clever!"
"It was quite unintentional," said Patch, wringing the water out of his trousers.