“All right,” said Lynton, clearing his throat with a good cough, and turning to the men. “Look here, my lads.—Would you mind taking the helm for a few minutes, Mr Brace? Thankye.—Look here, my lads.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” came heartily, and it seemed to put the mate out, for he coughed again, took off his straw hat, wiped his streaming brow, and made a fresh start.
“Look here, my lads,” he began.
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Heave to a minute, will you?” cried the mate. “You put me out. Look here, my lads: we’ve just now jolly well escaped from being drowned, and—and I—we—I—here, shake hands, all of you. Brave boys!—brave boys!—brave boys!”
He repeated the last two words again and again in a husky voice, as he shook hands heartily with each of the men in turn, and then uttered a sigh of relief as he took his place at the tiller again.
“Look here, sir,” he said: “I don’t see that we need go on flying through the water like this. We’re out of danger, and it seems to me that we’ve only got to keep a sharp look-out to see when the current changes and keep clear of it.”
“Yes,” said Brace; “I think we might slacken sail a little now. We seem to have got right out of the surface current leading to the falls.”
“We’d no right to go sailing up so close to where the water comes over the rocks. That’s where we were wrong in the first place,” remarked the second mate.
“Yes,” said Briscoe; “but it was a wonderfully interesting experience.”