“Ah! ain’t he a fine fellow?” said Jack. “I’m going to try and do as he does, and I want to have plenty of pluck; but no sooner do I get into a scrape than I turn cowardly, same as I did over that little humbug of a crocodile.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Jack!” I said.

“’Tisn’t nonsense! Why, if I’d had as much courage as a wallaby I should have kicked that thing out of the water; and all I did was to lay hold of a bough and holler murder!”

“I didn’t hear you,” I said.

“Well, help! then. I know I hollered something.”

“And enough to make you. The doctor said he is sure he should not have borne it so bravely as you.”

“No: did he? When?”

“To be sure he did, when we were sitting watching last night.”

“Bah! it was only his fun. He was laughing at me again.”

“He was not,” I said decidedly. “He was in real earnest.”