"You fool, below there, are you still alive?"
"Yes: but I am faint, and would wish to catch hold of the barrel again."
"Catch away then:--Do you know any thing of the sea hereabouts?"
"No: it was the first time in my life that I was ever on shipboard."
The other laughed. "You don't know it? Well! now I do: and I can tell you this: there's no manner of use in our plaguing ourselves, and spending the last strength we have in keeping ourselves afloat. I know this same sea as well as I know my own country: and I am satisfied that no deliverance is possible. There is not a spot of shore that we can reach--not a point of rock big enough for a sea-mew; and the only question for us is--whether we shall enter the fishes' maw alive or dead."
"It is still possible," said the other--"that some human brother may come to our assistance."
The other laughed again and said--"Human brother, eh? Methinks, my friend, you should be rather young in this world of ours--and have no great acquaintance with master man: I know the animal: and you may take my word for it, that, on such a night as this, no soul will venture out to sea. What man of sense indeed would hazard his life--for a couple of ragamuffins like you and me? and suppose he would, who knows but that it might be worse to fall into the hands of some men of sense than into the tender mercies of the sea? But I know a trick worth two of that."
"Tell it then."
"Let us leave fooling: This cask, on which I sit, to my knowledge contains rum; or arrack; which is as good. We can easily knock a hole in it; then make ourselves happy and bouzy--fling our arms about each other like brothers, and go down together to the bottom: after that, I think we shall neither trouble nor be troubled; for we shall hardly come up again, if we go down groggy."
"Shocking? why that's suicide!"