So when Greg said that, in a tired, far-off sort of way, it did frighten me, because I had heard of people dying when they were ravingly delirious.  Greg wasn’t raving exactly, but it was almost worse, because his voice was so small and different from his own dear usual one.  When I told him I couldn’t get Simpson I tried to make my voice sound soft and cooey like Mother’s when she’s sorry, but it went up into a queer squeak instead, and I couldn’t finish somehow.  Greg kept saying, “Simpson;—­please—­” and crying to himself.

I heard Jerry feeling around in the dark and then the click of his knife opening.  I couldn’t think what he was doing, but after quite a long time he pushed something into my hand and said: 

“Does that feel anything like it?”

“Like what?” I said, but the next minute I knew.

It did feel like Simpson—­soft and flannelly, with a round, bumpy sort of head at one end.

“Oh, how did you do it!” I said.  “Oh, Jerry, you brick!”

“I chopped a big piece out of your skirt,” he said.  “I hope you don’t mind.  I happened to have the string off the sandwich bundle in my pocket, and I squeezed up a head and tied it.”

Greg was a little frightened when Jerry leaned over him suddenly.

“It’s just me, Greg,” Jerry said; “just Jerry-o.  Here’s Simpson, old lamb.”

I’d never heard Jerry’s voice at all like that before.  I don’t know whether Greg really thought it was Simpson, but he took it and sighed—­a long, quivery sort of sigh, the way very little children do when they’re asleep sometimes.

Then there was no sound at all but the different horrid noises that the Monster made.

Presently I felt Jerry start, and then he shuffled back a little so that he was quite tight against my knees.  I asked him what was the matter, and he said “Nothing.”  After a while, though, he said: 

“Chris, I’d better tell you.”

“What?  Oh, what is it?” I said.

“Do you remember how the tide was when we came out?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said; “on the ebb.  Don’t you remember the rocks at Wecanicut, with bushels of wet sea-weed hanging off?”

“Well?” Jerry said.

I didn’t understand for a minute, then I whispered: 

“Do—­you mean—­”

“A wave just hit my foot,” said Jerry in a low voice.

The first thing that we did was a lot of quick figuring.  We thought fearfully hard and remembered that Turkshead Rock was just coming out of water when we left Wecanicut at four o’clock, so that the tide must have been within about an hour of ebb.  Therefore full flood would be at eleven o’clock.  But we hadn’t any idea of whether it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see Jerry’s watch by.  He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at all.  Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle.  It was the edge of another wavelet.