“I tell you,” cried Bigley, “if we do, we shall be drowned.”
“What nonsense!” cried Bob. “Why, we’d climb up the rocks.”
“There is not a place where you could climb,” said Bigley gloomily. “I know every yard all along here, and there isn’t a single spot where you could get up the cliff.”
“It’s too far to swim,” I said gloomily. “I know I can’t go so far as that. Could you, Bob?”
He shook his head.
“Oh, yes, you could,” cried Bigley excitedly. “It would be swimming with the stream, you know, and it would carry us along—I mean the tide would, and you’ve only got to think you could do it, and you would.”
Bob Chowne shook his head, and I began to feel chilled and oppressed by the task we had before us.
“No, I couldn’t swim so far,” cried Bob suddenly. “It would take a strong man who could keep on for hours to do that.”
“I tell you that you could do it,” cried Bigley, who seemed to be quite passionate now. “Don’t talk like that, Bob, or you’ll frighten Sep Duncan out of trying.”
“I’m not going to try,” I said gloomily. “It would be no use. I could swim to the shore but not round the point.”