'Well,' I said, 'perhaps you're right. I—I'm in no great hurry. Were you thinking of taking me in some different style? I am quite at your disposition.'
He brought out a small but stout property-mast, and arranged it against a canvas background of coast scenery. 'I generally use it for children in sailor costume,' he said, 'but I think it will bear your weight long enough for the purpose.'
I wiped my brow. 'You are not going to ask me to climb that thing?' I faltered.
'Well,' he suggested, 'if you will just arrange yourself upon the cross-trees in a negligent attitude, upside down, with your tongue protruded as if for medical inspection, I shall be perfectly satisfied.'
I tried argument. 'I should have no objection in the world,' I said; 'it's an excellent idea—only, do sailors ever climb masts in that way? Wouldn't it be better to have the thing correct while we're about it?'
'I was not aware that you were a sailor,' he said; 'are you?'
I was afraid to say I was, because I apprehended that, if I did, it might occur to him to put me through some still more frightful performance.
'Come,' he said, 'you won't compel me to shed blood so early in the afternoon, will you? Up with you.'
I got up, but, as I hung there, I tried to obtain a modification of some of the details. 'I don't think,' I said artfully, 'that I'll put out my tongue—it's rather overdone, eh? Everybody is taken with his tongue out nowadays.'