’What the plague are you doing now? cried Cluffe, arresting a decorative passage in the middle, and for the first time seriously uncomfortable, as the boat slowly spun round, bringing what Cluffe called her head—­though head and tail were pretty much alike—­toward the bank they had quitted.

‘Curse you, Puddock, why—­what are you going back for? you can’t do it.’

‘Lend a hand,’ bawled Puddock, in extremity.  ’I say, help, seize the rope; I say, Cluffe, quick, Sir, my arms are breaking.’

There was no exaggeration in this—­there seldom was in any thing Puddock said; and the turn of the boat had twisted his arms like the strands of a rope.

‘Hold on, Puddock, curse you, I’m comin’,’ roared Cluffe, quite alive to the situation.  ‘If you let go, I’m diddled but I’ll shoot you.’

’Catch the rope, I thay, Thir, or ‘tith all over!’

Cluffe, who had only known that he was slowly spinning round, and that Puddock was going to commit him to the waves, made a vehement exertion to catch the rope, but it was out of reach, and the boat rocked so suddenly from his rising, that he sat down by mistake again, with a violent plump that made his teeth gnash, in his own place; and the shock and his alarm stimulated his anger.

’Hold on, Sir; hold on, you little devil, I say, one minute, here—­hold—­hollo!’

While Cluffe was shouting these words, and scrambling forward, Puddock was crying—­

’Curth it, Cluffe, quick—­oh! hang it, I can’t thtand it—­bleth my thoul!

And Puddock let go, and the boat and its precious freightage, with a horrid whisk and a sweep, commenced its seaward career in the dark.

‘Take the oars, Sir, hang you!’ cried Cluffe.

‘There are no oarth,’ replied Puddock, solemnly.

‘Or the helm.’

‘There’th no helm.’

‘And what the devil, Sir?’ and a splash of cold water soused the silken calves of Cluffe at this moment.

’Heugh! heugh!—­and what the devil will you do, Sir? you don’t want to drown me, I suppose?’ roared Cluffe, holding hard by the gunwale.

‘You can thwim, Cluffe; jump in, and don’t mind me,’ said little Puddock, sublimely.

Cluffe, who was a bit of a boaster, had bragged, one evening at mess, of his swimming, which he said was famous in his school days; ’twas a lie, but Puddock believed it implicitly.

‘Thank you!’ roared Cluffe.  ’Swim, indeed!—­buttoned up this way—­and—­and the gout too.’

‘I say, Cluffe, save the guitar, if you can,’ said Puddock.

In reply, Cluffe cursed that instrument through his teeth, with positive fury, and its owner; and, indeed, he was so incensed at this unfeeling request, that if he had known where it was, I think he would have gone nigh to smash it on Puddock’s head, or at least, like the ’Minstrel Boy,’ to tear its chords asunder; for Cluffe was hot, especially when he was frightened.  But he forgot—­though it was hanging at that moment by a pretty scarlet and gold ribbon about his neck.