“Sarved you all right if you’d been upset,” growled Shaddy. “That would have woke some of you up.”
“Don’t scold me, Shaddy,” said the lad humbly. “I know I ought not to have gone to sleep, but I thought I could trust the men.”
“Thought you could trust them?” cried the old sailor. “Why, you couldn’t even trust yourself!”
“No,” said Joe humbly.
“Why, Mr Brazier, the pains I’ve took to make a seaman of that young chap, no one knows. I only wonder as they weren’t all wrecked and drowned,” protested Shaddy.
“Let him go on, Naylor.”
“Ay, go on, Mr Jovanni. If there’s anything more you ought to be ashamed on, speak it out and get it over. You’ll be better after.”
“Isn’t he hard upon me, Rob?” said Joe, smiling.
“Yes, but it all turned out for the best,” said his companion.
“I didn’t think so then,” continued Joe, “when I began to find that we must have been gliding down the river fast all that night, and what I had begun to find out then I knew more and more as we tried to work our way back. We couldn’t pole because the water was too deep, and we had to work our way along by the trees, sometimes getting a little way up the river and then making a slip and being swept down again for far enough, till I gave it up in despair. The men worked till they could work no longer. And all the time you were left alone without the guns and fishing tackle and food, and it used to make me mad to have to use any of the stores; so I made them fish all I could, and I did a little shooting, so that we didn’t use much.”