Chapter Twenty Four.
“Ship, ahoy!”
“It is the last straw,” says the proverb, “that breaks the camel’s back!”
Bob’s courage had been on the wane long before the white, woolly fog environed them; although, up to now he had endeavoured to brave it out in the presence of Dick, the very consciousness that he was the main cause of their being in such a perilous predicament preventing him from betraying the fears he felt.
But, when this octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip, breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob, whose nerves were strained to their utmost tension, at last broke down.
“Oh, Dick!” he cried, bursting into a passion of tears, all the more vehement now from his ever having been a manly boy and in the habit of stifling all such displays of emotion, even when severely hurt, as had happened on more than one occasion in a football scrimmage at school, whence he got the name of Stoic amongst his mates. “Oh, Dick, poor Dick! I’m sorry I made you come with me to your death! I wonder what my mother and dad will say, and Nell too, when they come to learn that we are lost?”
“Don’t ’ee now, Master Bob, give way like that!” said
Dick, the brave lad, forgetting his own sad plight on seeing his unhappy comrade’s alarm and grief. “Cheer up, Master Bob, like a good sort! We bean’t lost yet, ye knows!”