“Not I,” replied Aleck. “You don’t seem to have got on so very well.”
“Got on as well as you did,” snarled the middy. “Ugh! It was horrid. Just as if, when I felt that I could hold my breath no longer, I was suddenly seized and sucked into a great sink-hole, only the water was running up instead of down.”
“Yes, that’s just how I felt,” said Aleck.
“You couldn’t have felt so bad as I did,” said the lad, irritably and speaking in the most inconsistent way. “I got my head rasped, too, against the stones overhead, and it’s bleeding fast. Look at it, will you?”
Aleck examined the place, after opening the door of the lanthorn.
“It isn’t bleeding,” he said.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” cried the middy, irritably. “It smarts horribly, and I can feel the blood trickling down the back of my neck.”
“That’s water out of your hair.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, certain. I can’t even see a mark on your head.”