“Same here about you,” cried fitz. “I didn’t know what had happened, and when I tumbled over the rail—I didn’t jump—I felt as if I had left you in the lurch.”
“Well, but that’s what I felt,” said Poole. “It was queer.”
“It made us all feel pretty tidy queer, young gentlemen,” said the boatswain; “but if I may speak, the fust question is, are either of you hurt?”
“I am not,” cried Fitz.
“Nor I,” said Poole.
“That’s right, then,” said the boatswain gruffly. “Now then, what about that there block of iron? Was it that as come over plosh, only about a yard from the boat’s nose?”
“Yes,” cried Fitz excitedly.
“Then all I can say is, that it’s a precious good job that Mr Burnett didn’t chuck it a little further, for if he had it would have come right down on Chips and drove him through the bottom, and we couldn’t have stopped a leak like that.”
“But I should have come up again,” said the carpenter, “just where I went down, and as the hole I made would have been just the same size as me, I should have fitted in quite proper.”
“Yah!” growled the boatswain. “What’s the use of trying to cut jokes at a time like this? Look here, gentlemen, have we done our job to rights?”