He made a gesture toward the emptied bottle.
“That’s what made you see whatever you think you saw!” he declared.
“No!” Doc got slowly and unsteadily to his feet. Chick watched. “No,” Doc reiterated, “I never touched that till after I saw—It! I come in here, I did, I declare—to shelter. Then I saw—It. It was in the corner, and I saw it, I did so! Terrible, it was! Green in the hair, and green in the face! And greenish hands! And all slimy and terrible, like it had come up out of the ooze, it was so!”
Chick crushed back his tendency to believe, and to be startled.
“After—you’d emptied that!” he insisted, gesturing toward the old bottle.
“No! No such thing. I knocked that over. It set there, it did, and I hit it, I jumped so. I hit the table, and I must either of got upset stumbling over my own feet or—It—hit me! That’s when I took that—what was left in the bottle, to steady me, I did so!”
Chick, disgusted, unwilling to be hoodwinked, realizing that he had more important things to consider, refused to listen any longer.
The Dragonfly lay tied to the wharf piling: the wind was rising. His chums were off in the dark waters of the swamp on a rescue errand.
“I can’t bother with you,” he snapped. “Tell it to Don’s uncle, when we get out of this.”
Doc remained silent, steadying himself by resting a hand on the wall, holding his seemingly aching head with the other.