Chapter Twenty Seven.
“Ugh!” ejaculated the midshipman. “I don’t feel half so brave now, and I don’t believe I dare go in here in the darkness, set aside make a dive. Where’s the tinder-box? For goodness’ sake, strike a light and let’s have another candle. Oh, you oughtn’t to have let that out!”
“Come along,” replied Aleck. “I think I can find the way to the place again. Mind how you come; there are so many stones. I say, why is it that one feels so shrinking in the dark and frightened of all sorts of things that we never dream of in the light?”
“I don’t know, and don’t want to talk about it now. Let’s have a light first. I say, we must do something before the candles are all burnt out.”
“Mind!” cried Aleck, for his companion caught his foot against one of the pieces of projecting rock against which he had been warned, and but for the throwing out of a friendly hand he would have gone head first into the water.
“Ugh!” he panted, as he clung, trembling now violently. “I wonder how deep the water is just there! How horrible! I say, don’t let go of my hand. What are you doing?”
“I’m feeling for the lanthorn.”
“What!” cried the midshipman, aghast. “Don’t say you’ve lost that?”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Aleck, rather gruffly, as he thought that his companion was about the strangest compound of bravery and cowardice he had ever met. “But didn’t you hear it go down crash?”
“No, I heard nothing. Here, what’s this against my foot?”