ver.

Cluffe chuckled as he thought how sold the rascally boatman would be, on
returning, to find his bark gone over to the other side.

'Don't be uneathy about the poor fellow,' said Puddock; 'we'll come down
in the morning and make him a present, and explain how it occurred.'

'Explain _yourself_--poor fellow, be hanged!' muttered Cluffe, as he
took his seat, for he did not part with his silver lightly. 'I say,
Puddock, tell me when I'm to slip the rope.'

The signal given, Cluffe let go, entertaining himself with a little
jingle of Puddock's guitar, of which he had charge, and a verse or two
of their last song; while the plump little lieutenant, standing upright,
midships in the boat, hauled away, though not quite so deftly as was
desirable. Some two or three minutes had passed before they reached the
middle of the stream, which was, as Puddock afterwards remarked,
'gigantically thwollen;' and at this point they came to something very
like a stand-still.

'I say, Puddock, keep her head a little more up the stream, will you?'
said Cluffe, thinking no evil, and only to show his nautical knowledge.

'It's easy to say keep her head up the stream,' gasped Puddock who was
now labouring fearfully, and quite crimson in the face, tugging his
words up with a desperate lisp, and too much out of breath to say more.

The shades of the night and the roar of the waters prevented Cluffe
observing these omens aright.

'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