He ran a little faster now, and externally did not seem wet, for his hair was cropped so short that no water could find a lodgment, and his worn-old, knitted blue shirt and cloth breeches had ceased to show the moisture they had soaked up.
Once within hearing of the rough fenced-in gardens he put both hands to his mouth and uttered a frightful yell, with the result that a head suddenly shot up from behind one of the fences, and its owner was seen down to the waist, looking as if he were leaning upon an old musket.
But this was only the handle of a hoe, and the holder proved to be Big Jem, occupied in his father’s garden, where he had been hoeing and earthing up potatoes in lazy-boy fashion with a chip-chop and a long think, supplemented by a rest at the end of each row to chew tobacco.
A minute later and the boys were lying down side by side, resting upon their elbows and kicking up their heels over their backs, what time the newcomer related what had passed down on the pier, and also what he should like to do.
The narrative seemed to afford Big Jem intense satisfaction, for he uttered a hoarse crowing laugh from time to time and blinked his eyes, squeezing the lids very close and then opening them wide, when sundry signs of black, green and blue bruises became visible.
When the newcomer had finished his narration, Big Jem crowed more hoarsely than ever, and indulged in what looked like an imitation of an expiring fish, for he stretched himself out flat and threw himself over from his face on to his back, beat the ground with his closed legs, and then flopped back again, over and over again, putting ten times the vigour and exertion into his acts that he had bestowed upon the hoeing, and ending by springing up, stooping to secure his hoe, and then tossing it right away to fall and lie hidden in one of the newly-hoed furrows between the potatoes.
“Do, won’t it?” cried the new arrival.
“Yes,” cried Big Jem, hoarsely. “Sarve ’em both out. Come on!”
No time was lost, the two boys going off at a trot round by the back of the town and aiming for the shore, where by descending a very steep bit of ivy-draped and ragwort-dotted cliff they could get down to a row of black sheds used for fish-drying and the storage of nets, which lay snugly upon a shelf of the cliff.
The place was quite deserted as the boys let themselves slide down a water-formed gully, peered about a bit, and then made for one of several boats moored some fifty yards from the sandy shore.