Ram lurched over sidewise, his sun-browned face mottled and strange-looking, as his head dropped slowly over on to the midshipman’s shoulder, where it lay for a good ten minutes, Archy passing his arm round the boy, and supporting him as he lay there, breathing heavily, with his eyes half-closed.
It was a terrible position; and a cold, damp perspiration bedewed the midshipman’s face, as he felt how near they both were to a terrible end. The deep water after that awful fall, the fierce current which would carry him out to sea—and then came shuddering thoughts of the great, long, serpent-like congers, of whose doings horrible stories were current among the sailors.
At last, to his great relief, Ram uttered a deep sigh, and sat up, smiling at his companion.
“I’ve felt like that before,” he said. “Come over all at once sick and giddy, like you do if you lean down too much in the sun. I should have gone over, shouldn’t I, if you hadn’t ketched me?”
“Don’t talk about it.”
“Oh, very well; it was hitting my head such a crack, I suppose. I say, though, you never thought you could get away down here, did you?”
“Meant to try,” said Archy laconically.
“Yah! What was the good, I knowed you wouldn’t; but I meant to fetch you back. Me and Jemmy Dadd come down here once after birds’ eggs, before father had the place up there quite blocked up. It used to be a hole just big enough to creep through. Jemmy stopped up on that patch where you and me wrastled, and let me down with a rope. There’s no getting no farther than this.”
“Not with a rope?”
“Well, with a very long one you might slide down to the water, but what’s the good, without there was a boat waiting? You hadn’t got the boat, and you didn’t bring no rope. No use to try to get away.”