"In course it's only water," said the Viking. "What else would it be likely to be?" and Oswald thinks he winked in the dark.
Perhaps Oswald fell asleep again after this. It was either that or deep thought. Any way, he was aroused from it by a bump, and a soft grating sound, and he thought at first the boat was being wrecked on a coral reef or something.
But almost directly he knew that the boat had merely come ashore in the proper manner, so he jumped up.
You cannot push a boat out of the water like you push it in. It has to be hauled up by a capstan. If you don't know what that is the author is unable to explain, but there is a picture of one.
When the boat was hauled up we got out, and it was very odd to stretch your legs on land again. It felt shakier than being on sea. The red-haired boy went off to get a cart to take the shining fish to market, and Oswald decided to face the mixed-up smells of that cabin and wake Dicky.
Dicky was not grateful to Oswald for his thoughtful kindness in letting him sleep through the perils of the deep and his own uncomfortableness.
He said, "I do think you might have waked a chap. I've simply been out of everything."
Oswald did not answer back. His is a proud and self-restraining nature. He just said—
"Well, hurry up, now, and see them cart the fish away."
So we hurried up, and as Oswald came out of the cabin he heard strange voices, and his heart leaped up like the persons who "behold a rainbow in the sky," for one of the voices was the voice of that inferior and unsailorlike coastguard from Longbeach, who had gone out of his way to be disagreeable to Oswald and his brothers and sisters on at least two occasions. And now Oswald felt almost sure that his disagreeablenesses, though not exactly curses, were coming home to roost just as though they had been.