“I’m not going to suppose anything of the sort,” said the midshipman. “Why should you suppose such horrors? I might just as well say: suppose a great shark should rush in open-mouthed to swallow me down and then grab you by the leg, throw you over on to his back, and carry you about till he felt hungry again?”
“But you don’t see the danger?” cried Aleck.
“And don’t want to see it. I daresay it is dangerous, but nearly everything is if you look at it in that way. Well, what now? Why do you look at me like that?”
“Because I don’t understand you,” said Aleck. “Yesterday you seemed as weak as a girl, while now you are proposing impossible things, and seem to be trying to brag as if to make me feel that you are not so weak as you were then.”
“Perhaps so,” said the middy, laughing good-humouredly. “I was as weak as a girl yesterday, but I don’t feel so now; and though you are partly right, and I don’t want you to think me such a molly, I really am ready to make a dash at it if you will.”
“I’ll do anything that I think is possible,” said Aleck, gravely, “but I don’t want to be rash.”
“Then you think it would be rash to try and dive out under that archway?”
“Horribly,” said Aleck, with a shudder; and at that moment the candle, which, unnoticed through the dull horn, had burned down and begun flickering in the socket, suddenly flashed up brightly, flickered for a moment or two, and went out.