“Well, I don’t know about being safe,” replied the sailor. “Mebbe I could hold on, but here’s the water up to my chesty; and don’t make a row, or you’ll be letting some of those crocs know where I am. Look here, Mr Rodd, sir; are you all right?”
“Yes, Joe; I can sit here as long as I like.—That is,” he added to himself, “if the branch doesn’t break.”
“Well, that’s a comfort, sir. And what about you, Harry Briggs?”
“Well, I’m all right, mate; only a bit wet.”
“Wet! You should feel me!” cried Cross, quite jocularly. “How about the rest on you?”
“Oh, we are up aloft here in the dark, mate,” said one of the men. “I dunno as we should hurt so long as we didn’t fall asleep.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, mates,” said Cross. “You might catch cold. You hang yourselves out as wide as you can, so as to get dry.”
“But look here, Joe Cross,” shouted Rodd, who was rapidly recovering his spirits, “you mustn’t sit there in the water. Can’t you manage to climb up?”
“Oh yes, sir, I can climb up easy enough, only it don’t seem to me as there’s anything to climb.”
“But doesn’t the branch you are sitting on go right up to the tree?”