Every now and then he burst out with some disagreeable remark. One minute it was against his shirt for sticking to his wet back; another time it was at Aleck for getting on so fast with his dressing consequent upon his being drier; and then he began to abuse Eben Megg.
“A beast; that’s what he is. It’s just as bad as murdering us with a knife or chopper, that it is.”
They were dressed at something like the same time, Aleck having achieved his task quietly, the middy with a sort of accompaniment of grumbles and unpleasant remarks.
“There,” he said, at last; “that seems to have done me a lot of good. There’s nothing like a good growl.”
“Got rid of a lot of ill temper, eh?” said Aleck, smiling to himself.
“Yes, I suppose that’s it. But, I say, we’re not going to try that way out again! I say it’s perfectly impossible.”
“So do I,” said Aleck.
“We should both have been drowned if it hadn’t been for the rope.”
“That we should, for a certainty,” replied Aleck. “Well, there’s nothing to be done but to wait patiently for the coming of that low tide when a boat could come in, as Eben Megg said, and as it’s plain it does, or else all these stores couldn’t have been brought in.”
“And when it does come?” said the middy.