“Pooh!” he interrupted lightly, “prudent! Me dear bhoy, prudence is a very good thing—sometimes, but it does not do for such business as ours. A bould dash and have done wid it is the motto for us. Anyhow, I intind to go in, so there’s an end av it, and I’ll thank ye, young gintleman, to point out the channel as soon as we open it.”
“But,” I remonstrated, “I know nothing whatever of the place beyond what I saw of it in passing. Do you?”
“Not a wan ov me; but what matther?” was his characteristic reply.
“Simply this,” said I. “The navigation is doubtless difficult, and the water shallow. We should find ourselves in a pretty pickle if we plumped into a hornet’s nest and on to a shoal at the same moment.”
“How big did you say that felucca was that you saw going in there?” he asked.
“Nearly or quite two hundred tons,” said I, “but—”
“And we are eighty,” said he. “Where she could float we can—”
“By no means,” I interrupted. “I do not believe she drew an inch more than eight feet, whilst we draw nine; and an extra foot of water, let me tell you, Mr O’Flaherty, makes all the difference in these shallow inlets.”
“Say no more,” was the answer. “In we go, even if we never come out again.”
That, I thought, was scarcely the resolution to which a wise commander would have come; but after such an expression I could, of course, only hold my peace, and I did so until a few minutes later when we opened the entrance to the channel, which I pointed out to him.