Words, addressed apparently to space, though really to the invisible foe, were vain, and the boys fished on; but they did not take home many prawns for Mrs Burnet to have cooked for their tea.
The very next day, though, they had their revenge, for they came upon the lad toiling homeward, shouldering a couple of heavy oars, a boat mast and yard, and the lug-sail rolled round them, and lashed so as to form a big bundle, as much as he could carry; and, consequent upon his scarlet face, Vince saluted him with:
“Hullo, Lobster!”
That name went like an arrow to the mark, and pierced right through the armour of dense stupidity in which the boy was clad. Lobster! That fitted with his father’s weakness and the jeering remarks he had often heard made by neighbours; and ever after the name stuck, and irritated him whenever it was used.
It was used on the morning when Vince was thinking deeply of the discovery of the previous day, and going over to Sir Francis Ladelle’s for his lessons with Mike. As we have said, he was saluted with coarse, jeering laughter, and the contemptuous utterance of the words “Going to school?”
Being excited, Vince turned sharply upon the great hulking lad, and his eyes began to blaze war, but with a laugh he only fell back on the nickname.
“Hullo, Lobster!” he cried: “that you?” and went on.
Carnach junior doubled his fists, and looked as if he were going to attack; but Vince, strong in the consciousness that he could at any time thrash the great lad, walked on with his books, heedless of the fact that he was followed at a distance, for his head was full of kegs and bales neatly done up in canvas, standing in good-sized stacks.
“I wonder how many years it has been there,” he kept on saying to himself; and he was still wondering when he reached the old manor gates, went into the study, and there found Mike and their tutor waiting.
Both lads tried very hard to keep their discovery out of their minds that morning, but tried in vain. There it was constantly, and translated itself into Latin, conjugated and declined itself, and then became compound algebraic equations, with both.