“Just keep her head on to the swell, my lads.”
The next minute the gig began riding gently over the long smooth waves, while her occupants sat watching the gunboat, the only light from which now was the glow from the funnel.
“Bit wet, aren’t you, Mr Burnett, sir?” said Chips. “What do you say to taking off two or three things and letting me give them a wring?”
“Ah, it would be as well,” replied Fitz, beginning at once to slip off his jacket, and as if instinctively to take off attention from what he was doing he began to question Poole.
“You had better do the same, hadn’t you?” he cried.
“Doing it,” was the reply. “I say, are you all right?”
“No; I am so horribly wet. What about you?”
“Just the same, of course.”
“But I say,” said Fitz, who was calming down after the excitement; “why didn’t you come on and help?”
“How could I? One of those fellows lying on the deck threw a leg and an arm over me in his sleep. I just brushed against him, and he started as if I had touched a spring, and held me fast. I tried to get away, but it was of no use, and if I had shouted it would have only given the alarm. I didn’t get loose till the row began, and then there was nothing to do but come overboard and be picked up. I was in a way about you.”