At first, the lad had imagined that it was an accident, and that the rope had given way with his weight; but when he found that no attention was paid to his cries, he then was convinced that it was the work of Mr Vanslyperken.
“By gum, he’s a done for me at last. Well, I don’t care, I can die but once, that’s sartin sure; and he’ll go to the devil, that’s sartin sure.”
And Smallbones, with this comfortable assurance, continued to strike out for the land, which, indeed, he had but little prospect of ever making.
“A shame for to come for to go to murder a poor lad three or four times over,” sputtered Smallbones, after a time, feeling his strength fail him. He then turned on his back, to ease his arms.
“I can’t do it no how, I sees that,” said Smallbones, “so I may just as well go down like a dipsey lead.”
But, as he muttered this, and was making up his mind to discontinue further exertions,—not a very easy thing to do, when you are about to go into another world, still floating on his back, with his eyes fixed on the starry heavens, thinking, as Smallbones afterwards narrated himself, that there wa’n’t much to live for in this here world, and considering what there could be in that ’ere, his head struck against something hard. Smallbones immediately turned round in the water to see what it was, and found that it was one of the large corks which supported a heavy net laid out across the tide for the taking of shoal-fish. The cork was barely sufficient to support his weight, but it gave him a certain relief, and time to look about him, as the saying is. The lad ran under the net and cork with his hands until he arrived at the nearest shoal, for it was three or four hundred yards long. When he arrived there, he contrived to bring some of the corks together, until he had quite sufficient for his support, and then Smallbones voted himself pretty comfortable after all, for the water was very warm, and now quite smooth.
Smallbones, as the reader may have observed during the narration, was a lad of most indisputable courage and of good principles. Had it been his fortune to have been born among the higher classes, and to have had all the advantages of education, he might have turned out a hero; as it was, he did his duty well in that state of life to which he had been called, and as he said in his speech to the men on the forecastle, he feared God, honoured the king, and was the natural enemy to the devil.