“What is punching?” inquired Alice.
“Why, that,” replied the boy, giving a practical and by no means gentle illustration on his own fat thigh.
“Wouldn’t it hurt him?” said Alice, dubiously.
“Hurt him! hurt the Grampus!” cried Corrie, with a look of surprise, “you might as well talk of hurting a hippopotamus. Come, I’ll try.”
Accordingly, Corrie tried. He began to bake the seaman, as it were, with his fists. As the process went on he warmed to the work, and did it so energetically, in his mingled anxiety and hope, that it assumed the character of hitting rather than punching—to the dismay of Alice, who thought it impossible that any human being could stand such dreadful treatment.
Whether it was to this process, or to the action of nature, or to the combined efforts of nature and his friends, that Bumpus owed his recovery, we cannot pretend to say; but certain it is that, on Corrie making a severer dab than usual into the pit of the seaman’s stomach, he gave a gasp and a sneeze, the latter of which almost overturned Poopy, who chanced to be gazing wildly into his countenance at the moment. At the same time he involuntarily threw up his right arm, and fetched Corrie such a tremendous backhander on the chest that our young hero was laid flat on his back—half stunned by the violence of his fall, yet shouting with delight that his rugged friend still lived to strike another blow.
Having achieved this easy though unintentional victory, Bumpus sighed again, shook his legs in the air, and sat up, gazing before him with a bewildered air, and gasping from time to time in a quiet way.
“Wot’s to do?” were the first words with which the restored seaman greeted his friends.
“Hurrah!” screamed Corrie, his visage blazing with delight, as he danced in front of him.
“Werry good,” said Bumpus, whose intellects were not yet thoroughly restored, “try it again.”