“Wha be it? I ain’t de raff,—de Catamaran? Eh?”
“No, no,” replied the child. “It isn’t that. It’s a small thing of a square shape. It looks like a box.”
“A box? how come dat? A box! what de debbel!”
“Shiver my timbers if ’tain’t my old sea-kit,” interrupted the sailor, rearing himself aloft in the water like a spaniel in search of wounded waterfowl.
“Sure as my name’s Ben Brace it be that, an’ nothing else!”
“Your sea-chess?” interrogated Snowball, elevating his woolly cranium above the water, so as also to command a view. “Golly! I b’lieve it am. How he come dar? You leff ’im on de raff?”
“I did,” replied the sailor. “The very last thing I had my hands upon, afore I jumped overboard. Sure I bean’t mistaken,—ne’er a bit o’ it. It be the old kit to a sartainty.”
This conversation was carried on in a quick, hurried tone, and long before it ended,—in fact at the moment of its beginning,—the swimmers had once more put themselves in motion, and were striking out in the direction of the object thus unexpectedly presented to their view.