"A lee-shore."
"Oh, dear. I'm glad to hear it. Any shore will do for me, if I can but get out of this confounded ship. What is that afar off? Is it a light? Oh, yes, it is a light."
"It is. We are on the Sussex coast, somewhere, but I can't take upon myself to say where; but it don't matter a bit, for we shall go to pieces long before we reach the surf, and then in such a sea as this you might as well try to swallow the Channel at a few draughts as to swim."
"But I can't swim at all."
"It don't matter a bit."
"But, my dear friend—"
"Hold your row—I am not your dear friend nor anybody else's, just now. I tell you we shall be all drowned, and the best thing you can do, is to take it as easy as possible. What can be the good of making a fuss about it?"
This information was to Todd of so deplorable a character—for to none is death so terrible as to the guilty—that he wept aloud and screamed with terror as the spray of the sea struck him on the face, and the wind roared and whistled over him.
"Oh, no—no!" he cried. "I cannot die yet—I must not. Spare me—spare me! I am afraid to die!"
"Oh, you stupid," said the sailors. "That comes now of not having had a proper sort of education. I make no doubt but your howling will pretty soon be put an end to."