“Tis no secret o' gravity, Ned Garvice, that you give orders to your boys to carry you down in the cool o' the evening when you feel your hour's at hand, and lay ye out trim and tidy for the flood-tide, so that ye get a free funeral, and Parson Rodney's 'Earth t' earth' thrown into the bargain,” said Wise.
“I've learned my sons to honour their father, and it puts 'un back a long way in their 'struction to be face to face wi' 'un as has a hardened scoff for his grey hairs,” said the fisherman. “Go your ways, lads, and gather limpits so ye hear not evil words that shake your faith in your ancient father. But what I can't see is how he got them finger-marks on his neck.”
He pointed to the man on the beach.
“They ha' the aspect o' finger marks, now ha' they not, sir?” said Wise meaningly, turning to Wesley.
“My thought, friends, amounts to this: I have heard that in cases of rescue from drowning quickness is most needful for the complete restoration of the sufferer,” said Wesley. “Now, sirs, I ask you is this the moment for light gossip, when yonder poor fellow lies as if he had not an hour's life in his body?”
“There's summat i' that, too,” said old Garvice, as if a matter which he had been discussing had suddenly been presented to him in an entirely new light.
“Oh, sir,” said the Preventive man, “when a corpse has revived so far 'tis thought best that he should have a short rest; it kind o' way knits the body and soul together all the closer. The man is in no danger now, I firmly believe; but, as you say, there's no need for wasting any more time. Give us a heave under his other armpit, my lad. Heave handsomely; there's naught but a thin halfhour 'twixt him and eternity—mind that, and you won't jerk. Who's for his heels?”
The elder of Garvice's sons—a big lad of twenty—obeyed the instructions of the revenue man, and Wesley and the old fisherman went to the feet.
“'Vast hauling! Set me up on end,” said the man over whom they were bending. He spoke in a low voice and weak; he did not seem to have sufficient breath to make himself heard.
“Hear that?” said the fisherman with a sagacious wink. “There's the lightsome and blithe quarter-deck voice o' your master-mariner when warping into dock and his missus a-waitin' for 'un rosy as silk on the pier-head.'Tis then that if so be that a man's genteel, it will out.”