“Hand over,” said Sir Cumberleigh; “well, Sam, you are in luck. What a lot of things you will put us up to then! Here’s to your happiness! Well, this is good news indeed. Stop to dinner; we can have it early.”
But Sam declined the honour; and we soon set forth for home, as nothing more could be extracted from our host, concerning the matter which had brought us there. And Sam, who understood him pretty thoroughly, felt sure that he had already told us all he knew, and perhaps even more in the way of mere suspicion.
CHAPTER XLVI.
TONY TONKS.
Once I met a man who was a mighty swimmer, spending half his waking time in the water, and even sleeping there sometimes, according to his own account; though I found it rather hard to believe that altogether. But one thing he told me, which I do believe, because it is not so far out of the way, and the same thing might have happened to myself almost.
He had made a wager to swim across one of those inlets, or arms of the sea, which may be found upon our western coast, where the tide runs in with great force and speed, over a vast expanse of sands.
The distance from headland to headland was less than he had often been able to traverse; but, being a stranger on that coast, he had not reckoned, as he should have done, upon the power and strong swirl of the tide. By these he was soon so swung about, and almost carried under, that the sand-hills, where the people stood to watch him, stood still themselves, instead of slowly gliding by. And the yellow current flaked with white, across which he was striving, seemed to be the only thing that moved.
He began to doubt about his destination, whether in this world or the next; for the cup of his hands, as he fetched them back, and the concave impulse of his feet as he spread his toes behind him, seemed to tell nothing upon the vast body of water he was involved in; there was no slide of surface along his shoulder-blades, and his chin rose and fell at each labouring stroke, without budging an inch from the dip or the rise. He began to feel that he was beaten, and a quiet resignation sank into the stoutness of his heart, such as a brave man feels at death. And he never would have lived to tell the tale, except for a big voice from the shore, the voice of the very man who had the money hanging on it.