Nick hunted around until he found George’s glasses, which he clapped to his eyes, to burst out with a cry of astonishment and chagrin.
“Say, it must be a big porpoise that’s got stranded out there! My eye! look at it kick up the water, would you? Oh! if Jimmy ever gets a rope around that thing, and tries to ride it ashore, won’t he be in a peck of trouble, though? But when Jimmy sets out to do anything, you just can’t frighten him off; and, honest now, I believe he’s bent on doing that same mad caper!”
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
JIMMY FORGES TO THE FRONT.
None of them could have any doubt about it; for was not the excited Jimmy making toward that same reef with all speed? Determined to wrest the laurels from his rival, if it could possibly be done, he had only too eagerly seized upon this fine chance to get in some strenuous work.
Looking beyond, they could see that the stranded porpoise, if the object out yonder really proved to be such a creature, still threshed the water and strove to break away from its place of captivity.
“What ails the bally thing?” grumbled the anxious Nick. “Why don’t it back off, the same way it came on? That’s the only way it could get into deep water. Did you ever see such a looney, trying to keep on shoving ahead, when all the while it gets in more shallow water?”
“Huh! seems to me there are others!” chuckled Josh; “jewfish, for instance, don’t seem to have one bit more sense. Sometimes they get left on a shallow place, and kick like fun, while waiting for the tide to rise and help ’em off.”
“Ah! let up on that, Josh; ’taint fair to take his side all the time,” complained the fat boy, straining his eyes to follow the movement of his rival, now more than half way out to the reef.