“Get out the sweeps, lads. There’s no wind, and we must get him ashore. Poor dear lad! If he’s a drowned man, Zekle Wynn, you’ve murdered him!”
“I tell ’ee I didn’t let no net trail overboard,” cried the man angrily, as he seized a long oar and began to tug at it, dropping it into the water every time with a heavy splash.
“Don’t stand talking back at me!” roared the master, seizing another oar and dragging at it with all his might, “pull, will ’ee? pull!”
“I am a-pulling, ar’n’t I?” shouted back the other, as the man and lad, who formed the rest of the crew, each got an oar overboard and began to pull.
“Yes, you’re a-pulling, but not half pulling!” roared the master, as if his man were half a mile away instead of close beside him.
Plenty more angry recrimination went on as all tugged at the long oars, and the lugger began to move slowly through the water towards the little harbour; but if Harry Paul’s life had depended upon the services of the doctor at Carn Du he would never have seen the sun rise on the morrow’s dawn. But as it happened, the warmth of the wrapping, the influence of the spirit that had been poured liberally down his throat, and the chafing, combined with his naturally strong animal power to revive him from the state of insensibility into which he had fallen, and long before they reached the granite pier of the little harbour his eyes had opened, and he was staring in a peculiarly puzzled way at Mark Penelly, who still knelt beside him in the double character of medical man and nurse.
“Eh! lad, and that’s right,” cried the master in a sing-song tone; “why, we thought we was too late. How came ’ee to get twisted up in the nets like that?”
Harry Paul did not answer, but lay back on the heap of what had so nearly proved to be his winding-sheet, trying to think out how it was that he had come to be lying on the deck of that fishing lugger, with those men whom he well knew apparently taking so much interest in his state.
For all recollection of his swim and the conversation that had preceded it had gone. All he could make out was that Mark Penelly, who was never friendly to him, was now kneeling by his side looking in a curious way into his eyes.
By degrees, though, the cloud that had been over his understanding seemed to float away, and as they were nearing the harbour he began to recall the urgings he had received to leap from Carn Du, which now stood up black and forbidding on his left; the swim out to the lugger and round; and then—“Well, how do you feel now, lad?” said the master.