“Chief!” cried Patsy. “Are you there?”
“Of course I am,” was the reply. “Can’t you get that boat out of the way, so that I can crawl out?”
“Sure! Just hold your mules a minute! She’s in pretty tight—as the butcher said to the pound of sausage meat—but I can pry her out, I guess. In fact, I have to. Gee! She went in for keeps, but her little cousin, Patsy, wants her outside!”
Chattering thus, hardly knowing what he said, Patsy stood in the bow and shoved against the wall with all his strength.
The result was what he might have expected, although, perhaps, he had not thought of it. The boat slipped away from him, and he found himself clinging to the stone wall, his head in the cellar—where the fumes of ammonia made him cough—and a large expanse of empty water under his legs and feet.
“Holy Samuel!” he gasped. “Here’s more of it!”
He got to one side of the ledge, so that Nick Carter had room to crawl out, and looked in dismay at the boat slowly drifting away.
“There’s only one thing to be done, Patsy!” observed Nick.
“I know it. But I ain’t going to get wetter than I’m obliged,” was Patsy’s prompt response. “I’ll leave my duds behind me.”
The opening of the window had allowed so much of the ammonia to escape that it was possible to remain on the ledge without suffering very much. So Patsy dropped inside the cellar, with his face to the air, and divested himself of his garments.