"How came you to fall off of the cliff?" asked Judd, hardly able to suppress his merriment at the ridiculous figure his chum presented in his dripping clothing. "We were too far off to see just how it happened."
"I'll tell you as soon as I have changed these duds for something more comfortable," replied Budd, good-naturedly, and descending to the cabin, where he knew there were some old clothes kept for just such an emergency as that into which his adventure with the porpoise had brought him.
He was soon, with his father's help, comfortably clad, and back onto the deck of the sloop. With a good deal of éclat he then related all the details of his adventure, ending with the wish that he might have secured the cetacean.
"We can get him, for there he is," said Judd.
While Budd had been telling his story, the sloop had been slowly brought down opposite the cliff, and, as Judd had declared, the porpoise was still lying at its base. The thrust that Budd had given it just before his involuntary bath had evidently been a fatal one, for the water all about the cetacean was dyed with blood, and though the monster struggled, it was but feebly.
"How would you get him?" asked Budd, quickly, watching the porpoise in its dying struggles.
"If your father will look out for the sloop I'll get you to set me ashore at the wharf," explained Judd. "I'll take a coil of rope and the boat-hook with me, and I don't believe but what I can in some way fasten a line on to the fellow and throw the other end off here to you, for as soon as you have landed me you will want to row back here with the yawl. After picking up the end of the line you want to carry it on board the sloop, and then return to the wharf for me. Meantime your father can run up along the shore with the sloop, towing the porpoise after her, and when we have got back on board we'll find some way to take the fellow on to the island with us."
"But is he worth all that trouble?" asked Mr. Boyd.
"Oh, yes," both lads quickly answered. "What oil we shall get out of him will more than pay for our trouble and the damage he has done to the fish-trap."
Judd's plan was therefore carried out in every important detail. The lad succeeded in hooking up the piece of rope still remaining on the harpoon, and to this spliced one end of the coil he had carried with him. He then threw the balance of the rope off to his waiting partner, and the work of attaching it to the stern of the sloop was speedily done.