His fine old-fashioned notion of a man being drowned was that it was because he was full of water. The proper thing, then, according to his lights, must be to empty it out, and the sooner the better. The sea-going custom was to lay a man face downward across a barrel, and to roll the barrel gently to and fro.
“And I aren’t got no barrel,” muttered Pete.
To make up for it he rolled Nic from side to side, and then, as his treatment produced no effect, he seized him by the ankles, stood up, and raised the poor fellow till he was upside down, and shook him violently again and again.
Wonderful to relate, that did no good, his patient looking obstinately lifeless; so he laid him in the position he should have tried at first—extended upon his back; and, apostrophising him all the time as a poor, weakly, helpless creature, punched and rubbed and worked him about, muttering the while.
“Oh, poor lad! poor dear lad!” he went on. “I had no spite again’ him. I didn’t want to drownd him. It weer only tit for tat; he chucked me in, and I chucked him in, and it’s all on account o’ they zammon.—There goes another. Always a-temptin’ a man to come and catch ’em—lyin’ in the pools as if askin’ of ye.—Oh, I say, do open your eyes, lad, and speak! They’ll zay I murdered ye, and if I don’t get aboard ship and zail away to foreign abroad, they’ll hang me, and the crows’ll come and pick out my eyes.—I zay.—I zay lad, don’t ye be a vool. It was on’y a drop o’ watter ye zwallowed. Do ye come to, and I’ll never meddle with the zammon again.—I zay, ye aren’t dead now. Don’t ye be a vool. It aren’t worth dying for, lad. Coom, coom, coom, open your eyes and zit up like a man. You’re a gentleman, and ought to know better. I aren’t no scholard, and I didn’t do zo.—Oh, look at him! I shall be hanged for it, and put on the gibbet, and all for a bit o’ vish.—Zay, look here, if you don’t come to I’ll pitch you back again, and they’ll think you tumbled in, and never know no better. It’s voolish of ye, lad. Don’t give up till ye’re ninety-nine or a hundred. It’s time enough to die then. Don’t die now, with the sun shining and the fish running up the valls, and ye might be so happy and well.”
And all the while Pete kept on thumping and rubbing and banging his patient about in the most vigorous way.
“It’s spite, that’s what it is,” growled the man. “You hit me i’ th’ mouth and tried to drownd me, and because you couldn’t you’re trying to get me hanged; and you shan’t, for if you don’t come-to soon, sure as you’re alive I’ll pitch you back to be carried out to zea.—Nay, nay, I wouldn’t, lad. Ye’d coom back and harnt me. I never meant to do more than duck you, and Hooray!”
For Nic’s nature had at last risen against the treatment he was receiving. It was more than any one could stand; so, in the midst of a furious bout of rubbing, the poor fellow suddenly yawned and opened his eyes, to stare blankly up at the bright sun-rays streaming down through the overhanging boughs of the gnarled oaks. He dropped his lids again, but another vigorous rubbing made him open them once more; and as he stared now at his rough doctor his lips moved to utter the word “Don’t!” but it was not heard, and after one or two more appeals he caught the man’s wrists and tried to struggle up into a sitting position, Pete helping him, and then, as he knelt there, grinning in his face.
Nic sat staring at him and beginning to think more clearly, so that in a few minutes he had fully grasped the position and recalled all that had taken place.
It was evident that there was to be a truce between them, for Pete Burge’s rough countenance was quite smiling and triumphant, while on Nic’s own part the back of his neck ached severely, and he felt as if he could not have injured a fly.