“Hang it, woman, where’s the harm? The place is as dark as the inside of an infidel, and—”
“Put it out! put it out instantly! Are you determined to sacrifice us all? You know there is nothing attracts lightning like a light. [Fzt!—crash! boom—boloom-boom-boom!] Oh, just hear it! Now you see what you’ve done!”
“No, I don’t see what I’ve done. A match may attract lightning, for all I know, but it don’t cause lightning,—I’ll go odds on that. And it didn’t attract it worth a cent this time; for if that shot was levelled at my match, it was blessed poor marksmanship,—about an average of none out of a possible million, I should say. Why, at Dollymount, such marksmanship as that—”
“For shame, Mortimer! Here we are standing right in the very presence of death, and yet in so solemn a moment you are capable of using such language as that. If you have no desire to—Mortimer!”
“Well?”
“Did you say your prayers to-night?”
“I—I—meant to, but I got to trying to cipher out how much twelve times thirteen is, and—”
[Fzt!—boom-berroom-boom! bumble-umble bang-SMASH!]
“Oh, we are lost, beyond all help! How could you neglect such a thing at such a time as this?”
“But it wasn’t ‘such a time as this.’ There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. How could I know there was going to be all this rumpus and powwow about a little slip like that? And I don’t think it’s just fair for you to make so much out of it, any way, seeing it happens so seldom; I haven’t missed before since I brought on that earthquake, four years ago.”