A big lump of earth struck me right in the back, and as I looked angrily round I saw Shock fall from the top to the bottom of his ladder, and I felt that horrible sensation that people call your heart in your mouth.
He rose to a sitting position, put his hand to his head, and shouted out:
“Who’s that throwing lumps?”
Nobody answered; and as I saw him run up the ladder again it occurred to me that it was more a slip down than a fall from the ladder, and I had just come to this conclusion when, seeing that I was watching him, he made me start and cling tightly, for he suddenly fell again.
It was like lightning almost. One moment he was high up on the ladder, the next he was at the foot; but this time I was able to make out that he guided himself with his arms and his legs, and that it was really more a slide down than a fall.
I turned from him in disgust, annoyed with myself for letting him cheat me into the belief that he had met with an accident, and went on picking apples.
“He’s no better than a monkey,” I said to myself.
Whiz!
An apple came so close to my ear, thrown with great violence, that I felt it almost brush me, and I turned so sharply round that I swung myself off the ladder, and had I not clung tightly by my hands I must have fallen.
As it was, the ladder turned right round, in spite of its broadly set foot, and I hung beneath it, while my half-filled basket was in my place at the top.