“Well, that’s just how I am,” said Fitz. “Sometimes I feel as if I were quite a man, but now it’s as if I was never so young before, and that it is too much for chaps like us to understand such a thing.”
“Then if we are both like that,” said Poole sadly, “I suppose we ought to be honest and go straight to the dad and tell him that we don’t feel up to it. What do you say?”
“What!” cried Fitz. “Go and tell him coolly that we are a pair of cowardly boys, for him and Mr Burgess to laugh at, and the men—for they’d be sure to hear—to think of us always afterwards as a pair of curs? I’d go and be killed first! And so would you; so don’t tell me you wouldn’t.”
“Not going to,” said Poole. “I’ll only own up that I’m afraid of the job; but as we’ve proposed it, and it would be doing so much good if we were to succeed, I mean to go splash at it and carry it through to the end. You will too, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
There was a slight rustling sound then, caused by the two lads reaching towards one another and joining hands in a long firm grip.
“Hah!” exclaimed Fitz, with a long-drawn expiration of the breath. “I’m glad I’ve got that off my mind. I feel better now.”
“Same here. Now, what shall we do next? Go and talk to old Butters and tell him what we want him to do?”
“No,” cried Fitz excitedly. “You forget that we are in command. We’ve no business to do anything till the time comes, and then give the men their orders sharp and short, as if we were two skippers.”
“Ah, yes,” said Poole, “that’s right. That’s what I want to do, only it seems all so new.”