“I say, I don’t want, you to think me a coward.”
“Very well, then, you had better show you are not by fighting hard to keep me from giving you an awful licking.”
“You can’t do it,” said Aleck; “but I say I don’t want to fight.”
“Perhaps not; but you’ll soon find you’ll have to, or I shall call you the greatest coward I ever saw.”
“But it seems so stupid when we are in such trouble to make things worse by knocking one another about.”
“Well, yes, perhaps it does,” replied the middy.
“Suppose, then, I do something brave than fighting you,” said Aleck.
“What could you do?”
“Put the rope round me again and try to swim out. That would be doing some good.”
“You daren’t do it?”