"Yo, ho!" sung out little Reefy; "don't be frightened, ladies--Lord love
ye, I am half drowned, and the doctor here is altogether so quite
entirely drowned, I assure you.--I say, Medico, an't it true?" And the
little Irish rogue slewed his head round, and gave the exhausted doctor
a most comical look.
"Not quite," quoth the doctor, "but deuced near it. I say, Captain,
would you have known us? why, we are dyed chocolate colour, you see, in
that river, flowing not with milk and honey, but with something
miraculously like pea soup, water I cannot call it."
"But Heaven help us, why did you try the ford, man?" said Bang.
"You may say that, sir," responded wee Reefy; "but our mule was knocked
up, and it was so dark and tempestuous, that we should have perished by
the road if we had tried back for St Jago; so seeing a light here, the
only indication of a living thing, and the stream looking narrow and
comparatively quiet--confound it, it was all the deeper though--we
shoved across."
"But, bless me, if you had been thrown in the stream, lashed together as
you are, you would have been drowned to a certainty," said the Captain.
"Oh," said little Reefy, "the doctor was not on the mule in crossing
no, no, Captain, I knew better--I had him in tow, sir; but after we
crossed he was so faint and chill, that I had to lash myself to him to
keep him from sliding over the animal's counter, and walk he could not."
"But, Master Reefpoint, why came you back? did I not desire you to
remain on board of the Firebrand, sir?"
The midshipman looked nonplussed.
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