“I do what?” cried Aleck. “Here, wait a bit and rest. You haven’t quite come to yet.”
“Me, sir? I’m right as a trivet,” cried Tom; and to prove it he turned quickly over on his face propped himself up on his hands, with his elbows well bent, and then gave a sharp downward thrust which threw him up so that he stood well balanced once more upon his stout wooden legs.
“That’s right,” said Aleck, after a glance at the half-submerged boat. “Now, then, how did you manage it?”
“Me manage it, sir? Oh, that’s how I allus gets up when I’m down.”
“No, no, no,” cried Aleck, impatiently. “I mean about the boat. Did some other boat foul her?”
“No–o–o!” cried Tom. “You chucked that great lump of paper down and it went through the bottom.”
“Paper? What, the paper I went to fetch?”
“Ay, sir.”
The lad went and picked up a small parcel he had dropped on the pier and held it up in the man’s sight as he gazed wonderingly at him again, and then said, very severely:
“Look here, Tom, you are mad, or have you been—you know?”