Bumble looked grave and hesitated.
“Why, what’s wrong?” inquired Glynn.
“Oh, noting. Me only tink me not take the trouble to put ’em into dat pool where de fishes speak so imperently ob me. Stop, me will go an’ ask if dey sorry for wot dey hab say.”
So saying the negro uttered a shout, sprang straight up into the air, doubled his head down and his heels up, and cleft the water like a knife. Glynn uttered a cry something between a yell and a laugh, and sprang after him, falling flat on the water and dashing the whole pool into foam, and there the two wallowed about like two porpoises, to the unbounded delight of Ailie, who stood on the brink laughing until the tears ran down her cheeks, and to the unutterable horror, no doubt, of the little fish.
The rock-codlings were soon caught and transferred to the pool, in which, after that, neither Glynn nor Bumble were suffered to dive or swim, and Ailie succeeded, by means of regularly feeding them, in making the little fish less afraid of her than they were at first.
But while Ailie and Glynn were thus amusing themselves and trying to make the time pass as pleasantly as possible, Captain Dunning was oppressed with the most anxious forebodings. They had now been several weeks on the sandbank. The weather had, during that time, been steadily fine and calm, and their provisions were still abundant, but he knew that this could not last. Moreover, he found on consulting his charts that he was far out of the usual course of ships, and that deliverance could only be expected in the shape of a chance vessel.
Oppressed with these thoughts, which, however, he carefully concealed from every one except Tim Rokens and the doctor, the captain used to go on the point of rocks every day and sit there for hours, gazing out wistfully over the sea.