A wretched-looking object was Dick as he sat up and gazed round about him. His wet clothes clung tightly to his benumbed limbs; his teeth chattered with cold and fright; water dripped from his hair; and his face and knuckles were a mass of cuts and bruises, from their recent acquaintance with Bill's fists.
"You had better get home as fast as you can," advised Hal.
But Dick had caught sight of Bill, whom in his anxiety to get safely on terra firma he had not recognised.
"I'll give him a taste of it first," he muttered between his teeth.
"Better go home and get some gruel," was Bill's contemptuous rejoinder. "Golly how your teeth clack!"
This taunt put the last limit to endurance. The blood rushed to Dick's face, and his fists clenched; then to his feet, he flew at Bill.
But before he could get at him, Hal had guessed how matters stood, and raised one crutch between them; and the two antagonists stood glowering at each other across this forbidding barrier.
Bill burst out laughing; but Hal quickly put his crutch to the ground and swung himself between them. "Look here," said he, "nobody ever thinks of fighting before a girl; besides, when a fellow has just escaped from drowning, he ought to have something else to think of; and so ought you," he added, turning round on Bill.
"He might ha' been in t' other world by now," jeered Bill, with an attempt at drollery.
But Hal turned round on him with dignified reproof. "A boy who has just seen a life saved ought to know better than to mock," said he. "It's a shame," he added, looking from one to another with a pained expression, "when boys who have both done wrong want to tear each other to pieces for it. They ought to be too much ashamed. So get home both of you, and let us have no more such unchristian behaviour."