He responded directly by clutching the rope tightly and beginning to run.
It was only a beginning, for he was brought up short on the instant, and so sharply that he was jerked backwards.
“Just the same as I must have been,” he said to himself, excitedly, after bearing hard against the rope and finding it quite fast. “It’s like conger fishing,” he thought, “and I must give him line.”
Slackening out at once, he waited for a moment or two, and then tightened again, when to his great delight he found that he was no longer dragging at something set hard, but at a yielding body, which he drew easily to the edge of the pool by means of his long coil, before dropping it and running to seize and repeat the middy’s performance upon himself.
“He’s quite insensible,” he gasped, as he drew the dripping lad right out on to the driest part.
“That I’m not,” panted the middy; “but another minute would have done it.”
He remained silent then, panting hard and struggling to recover his breath, while Aleck untied the line and set his chest at liberty to act as it should.
Then for some minutes nothing was said, the only sound heard being the middy’s hoarse breathing as he laboured hard to recover his regular inspirations.
At last he spoke in an unpleasantly harsh, ill-humoured way.
“Well, aren’t you going to have another try? It’s lovely. Only wants plenty of perseverance.”