“You had a narrow squeak that time,” said Dory Dornwood, as soon as he thought the victim of the disaster was in condition to do a little talking. “It is lucky you didn’t get tangled up in the rigging of your boat. She went to the bottom like a pound of carpet-tacks; and she would have carried you down in a hurry if you hadn’t let go in short metre.”
“I think I am remarkably fortunate in being among the living at this moment,” replied the stranger, looking out over the stern of the “Goldwing.” “That was the most atrocious thing a fellow ever did.”
“What was?” inquired Dory, who was not quite sure what the victim meant by the remark, or whether he alluded to him or to the man in the steam launch.
“Why, running into me like that,” protested the passenger, with no little indignation in his tones.
“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.”
