“Let me see, ‘atrocious’ means something bad or wicked, don’t it?” continued Dory.
“Something very bad and very wicked,” replied the stranger, with a sickly smile, as he bestowed a patronizing glance upon his deliverer.
“I thought it was something of that sort. I suppose you don’t use such big words as that before breakfast, do you?”
“Why not before breakfast as well as after? It is a common word, in use every day in the week.”
“I didn’t know but it might put your jaws out of joint, and spoil your appetite,” added Dory, as he glanced behind him to see what had become of the steam-launch.
“My appetite is not so easily spoiled.”
“I suppose you came up from Burlington?” said Dory suggestively, as though he considered an explanation on the part of the stranger to be in order at the present time.
“I have just come from Burlington,” answered the victim, who appeared to be disposed to say nothing more. “Do you suppose I can get that boat again?”
“I should say that the chance of getting her
again was not first-rate. She went down where the water is about two hundred and fifty feet deep; and it won’t be an easy thing to get hold of her,” replied Dory. “If you had let him run into you between Diamond Island and Porter’s Bay, where the water is not more than fifty or sixty feet deep, you could have raised her without much difficulty. I don’t believe you will ever see her again.”