That’s one of the worst things about Jerry,—the way he mixes up language. We’d been reading “Kidnapped,” and I suppose he forgot he wasn’t Alan.
“Silence, dog!” I said, to remind him of who we were. “Very like she’s but hove to in the offing, and for aught you know she’s maybe sending ashore the jolly-boat by now.”
“Then let’s go to the end of the point and have a look,” Greg suggested.
He doesn’t often make speeches, because Jerry is apt to pounce on him and tell him he’s “too plain American,” but I think it isn’t fair, because he hasn’t read as many books as Jerry and I. So I hurried up and said:
“Bravely spoke, my lad; so we will, my hearty!” And we crawled and clambered along till we came to the end of the point where it’s all stones and seaweed and big surf sometimes. The surf was not very high this time,—just waves that went whoosh and then pulled the pebbles back with a nice scrawpy sound. The schooner was half-way down to the Headland, not paying any attention to us.
“Ah ha!” Jerry said, “safe once more from an ignominious death. But, Chris, look at the Sea Monster! What’s happened to it?”
The Sea Monster is a bare black rock-island off the end of Wecanicut. We called it that because it looks like one, and it hasn’t any other name that we know of. We’d always wanted awfully to go out there and explore it, but the only time we ever asked old Captain Moss, who has boats for hire, he said, “Thunderin’ bad landin’. Nothin’ to see there but a clutter o’ gulls’ nests,” and went on painting the Jolly Nancy, which is his nicest boat.
But the thing that Jerry was pointing out now was very queer indeed. It was just a little too far away to see clearly what had happened, but it seemed as if a piece of rock had fallen away on the side toward us, leaving a jaggedy opening as black as a hat and high enough for a person to stand upright in.
“The entrance to a subaground tunnel!” Greg shouted, leaping up and down in the edge of a wave.
He will say “subaground,” and it really is quite as sensible as some words.