Then a reaction set in. It was so cowardly to refuse to go, and Kenneth and Scood would laugh at him, while to his sensitive nature the jeering would be more painful than the venturing into the water.
“But,” he argued to himself, “there is no danger in being laughed at, and, on the other hand, they might get me out—they are so reckless—and drown me.”
He shuddered, and then he felt ashamed. He wanted to be as brave as the other lads, and he felt that he must seem to them a miserable coward.
“I’m down here, and with the chance of learning all these out-door sports, and I shall try. I will not be so cowardly, and when Kenneth comes I’ll go down and bathe, and try to master all this horrid fright.”
As soon as he had bravely come to this determination he felt better, though all of a tremor the while, and his agitation increased as from time to time he heard a sound which his excited imagination told him was the coming of Kenneth.
But he did not spring out of bed and begin to dress, so as to be ready when Kenneth came, but lay feeling now uncomfortably hot as he recalled his previous experience in the water, and his terrible—as he termed it—adventure over the fishing, and his being hooked out by Tavish, but all the time he could not help a half suspicion taking root, that, had he been a quick, active lad, accustomed to such things, he would not have been swept off the rock, and, even if he had been, he would have struggled to some shallow place and recovered himself.
“I will try!” he said aloud. “I’ll show him that if I am a coward, I am going to master it, and then perhaps they will not tease me and laugh at me so much.”
Kenneth did not come, and, in spite of his determination, the boy could not help feeling relieved, as he lay thinking of what a long time it seemed since he came down there, and what adventures he had gone through.
Then there were footsteps, and a bang outside the door.
Kenneth at last!