"You are too modest!" returned the irrepressible Jack. "Why, do you know how long it'd take me to learn all that? The best part of a year, and even then I'd have to—"
Amid the mocking laughter of Septimus Patch and the others, Jack found himself in the same plight as the unfortunate inventor had just quitted. A lift and twist of the boat upon a wave-crest, a slippery seat canted at an angle, had been the elements of his downfall. He lay upon his back, struggling.
"Well, comrade," grinned Patch, "that's very good for an amateur!" He stood over Jack's prostrate form, and began to recite. "Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling! The darling of his crew! No more he'll hear—"
At this moment the sail indulged in that whimsical operation termed by sailors a "gybe all standing"—it wriggled violently from side to side, and the boom struck Patch on the head as he endeavoured to dodge it.
"Help!" he howled, pitching head-first into Jack's lap as the latter sat at the tiller. "The giddy thing's run amok, or something—it just jumped at me and thumped me on the head. I tell you—"
"Let's hope you haven't hurt it," said Jack anxiously. "You ought to be careful with a head like yours—it's liable to break something! Don't sling it about in that wild way; you'll do some damage with it one of these days, and then you'll be sorry you didn't listen to the wise words of your uncle Jack."
"My boy," said Patch, "I begin to have a horrible suspicion of you. I think you've been trying to be funny! I thought you'd been looking queer all this trip—"
"Beloved One," Jack told him, "I haven't got to try to be funny. It comes sort of natural."
"Quite so, comrade, quite so. It's your face that does it. You happen to have been born with one of those faces that cause horrible merriment. A face that provokes ribald laughter. A face that—"
"I can't help my face," said Jack sorrowfully. "It is cruel of you to mention it, but I must tell the truth. Listen. When I was a child a careless servant let a tree fall on me and—"