“Hurt! why, of course I am. I gave my head such a whack against one of the stones.—Are you?”
“No,” said Vince, making an effort to laugh at the danger from which he had escaped. “I say, though, your trousers are made of better cloth than mine.”
“Trousers!” said Mike sourly: “you’ve nearly torn the flesh off my bones. You did get hold of a bit of skin with your teeth, only I flinched and got it away. I say, though—”
“Well? What?” said Vince; for the other stopped. “That’s the way down to the Scraw; but you needn’t have been in such a hurry to go.”
Vince shuddered in spite of his self-control. “I wonder,” he said softly, “whether it’s deep water underneath or rocks?”
“I don’t know that it matters,” was the reply. “If it had been water you couldn’t have swum in such a whirlpool as it seems to be. So you might just as well have been killed on the rocks. But oh! I say Cinder, don’t talk about it.”
The boy’s face grew convulsed, and he looked so horrified that Vince cried eagerly—
“Here, I say, don’t take it like that. It was not so bad as we thought. It wouldn’t have happened if you’d held tight instead of blundering on to me.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” said Mike, trying to master his feelings.
“All right. About that cove. You see the water comes rushing in at one side and goes out at the other, and I daresay when the tide turns it goes the other way. I should like to get right down to it, so as to see the water close to.”