The remark of censure was brought to an abrupt termination by a very annoying incident. Mr. Hamblin had halted directly under the weather fore yard-arm, braced up so as to take the wind on the beam. Before he had reached this point of his remark, a new fellow by the name of Little, remarkable for his agility, dropped from the yard directly upon the top of the learned gentleman's hat, in fact, sitting down upon his "tile" as fairly and squarely as though the deed had been done on purpose, bringing with him the slack of the weather clew-garnet.
The professor was prostrated to the deck by the weight of the little seaman,—for Little's name precisely described his stature,—while the unfortunate boy was thrown forward flat upon his face.
"O, I'm killed, I'm killed!" cried Little, rising with much real or apparent difficulty, and pressing one hand upon his hip.
"You rascal, you!" roared Mr. Hamblin from the inside of his hat, as a dozen boys sprang forward to pick him up.
The professor was not a fashionable man, and did not wear a hat which would simply rest upon the top of his head, or which would pinch the depository of his ancient lore, and the weight of the student had pressed it far down over his eyes. With some labor he extricated his learned pate from its imprisonment, and glanced with dismay at the hat—a new one which he had bought in Antwerp to replace the one he had lost overboard in the hurricane.
"You scoundrel!" repeated the savant, when he had removed the mutilated tile.
"He didn't mean to do it, sir," said Perth, pointing to the bloody face of Little; "he's almost killed himself."
"Are you hurt, Little?" demanded Mr. Lowington, rushing forward when he discovered what had happened.
"Yes, sir; almost killed," groaned the poor boy, making the wryest face a boy ever made, and twisting himself into a contortion of body which none but an India-rubber youth like himself could have accomplished.
"Pass the word for Dr. Winstock," added the principal, anxiously. "Are you much injured, Mr. Hamblin?"