“And leave our friends in the lurch?” said Drew.
“O’ course,” said Smith, scratching his head. “That’s the wust o’ my dis—suggestions; there’s allus a screw loose or suthin’ wrong about ’em, so as they won’t hold water.”
“Allus,” said Wriggs, solemnly.
“Deal you know about it,” growled Smith. “Don’t you get a shovin’ your oar in that how. P’raps you’ve got a better hidear? ’Cause if you have, let it off at once for the gents to hear. I on’y said what I thought.”
“Quite right, Smith,” interposed Lane. “Don’t be cross about it, because the idea will not work.”
“Oh, no, sir, I ar’n’t cross and I ar’n’t a-goin’ to be cross, but I don’t like it when Billy Wriggs will be so jolly clever and get thinking as he knows every blessed thing as there is in life. He don’t propose any good things, do he?”
“No, Tommy, I don’t,” said Wriggs, quietly. “It ar’n’t in my way o’ business. Ropes and swabbing and pullin’ a oar or setting of a sail’s more in my line, mate.”
“That will do,” said Oliver, firmly, and somehow, though he was yet weak and rather helpless from the injury he had received, he dropped at once into a way of taking the lead, unchallenged by either of his elder companions.
“Now, then,” he continued, “is there any better plan? Silence! Then we’ll try the one we have before us, and follow cautiously in the savages’ track.”
“How do you feel, Lane?” said Panton in a whisper, as they two stood together during a halt.