Mike stared.
“Old Joe. As soon as we’re out of the dangerous passages we’ve got to batten him down in the hold, and that’s the end of the adventure.”
“How can you go on like that?” said Mike piteously. “Making fun of it all, when we’re so miserable.”
“That’s why: just to cheer us up a bit, and set us thinking about what’s next to do.”
“I can’t think,” said Mike. “It’s a pity we didn’t stop in the seal hole.”
“Stop there? We should have felt nice by now. Why, our legs would be all swollen, and we should be so hungry that— Here, I say, Ladle, you wouldn’t have been safe. I wonder how you’d taste?”
“I say, do be serious, Cinder. It’s too horrible to laugh at it.”
“Well, so it is, old chap, but I am thinking hard all the time, yet I can’t see any way out of it. I know we could swim almost like seals; but look at the water out there,—we couldn’t do anything in it.”
“No, we should be sucked down in five minutes.”
“Yes. The old pirate knows it, too, and that’s why he leaves us alone. I say, he does look like a pirate, though, doesn’t he? with that pistol, and the rings in his ears.”