"Ha! ha! you do look funny!" he laughed madly. "You're like one of Magic's puppies poking out to have a first peep at the world." "Oi loike killin better'n bein kill'd," Blob announced solemnly, and crept out on hands and knees, a tip of pink tongue travelling about his lips. Then he turned to his dead. Kit wound up again. "Never mind about him," he said, staggering to his feet. "He'll keep. This way. Bring his musket along. Quick!" He picked up the musket of his own dead, and swayed blindly down towards the lugger. Blob followed at first reluctantly. Then some memory amused him, and he began to brim slow mirth. "Er says--'Dear! dear!' and Oi says--'Theer! theer!' and plops it in, and plops it in." Still adrift on the sea of his emotions, Kit paid no heed. He was swimming down the shingle-bank, aware of nothing but the tip of his nose and vague bad dreams at the back of his heart. The lugger was lying on the steep of the shingle, poised as though for launching. The swarthy jib was bellying seaward. She was yearning for the water. Kit rallied. The slope was with them; the wind was with them; the very boat was with them. And the tide, running in with a splash, already flopped about her keel. How soon would she float? Two minutes might do it--or twenty. CHAPTER LXXII THE RACE FOR THE LUGGER I There was not a moment to be lost. "Throw your musket aboard her!" cried Kit, bringing up against the lugger. "Now put your shoulder to and heave with a will! heave!" They might as well have tried to move a mountain. Yet even as the boy strained, a wave shot up and sluiced his feet. And how that cold clasp warmed his heart! The tide was tumbling in, the Lord God thrusting it. A minute, a little minute, and they would be away. "Aboard her, Blob!" he panted. "That's right, clumsy! Noisy does it! Now chuck every single thing you can lay hands on, overboard--except the muskets, idiot!" Fiercely the boys set to work. Kits and cans, ballast and blocks, spare spars and tackle, higgledy-piggledy overboard they went, some on the shingle, some splashing into the tide, to be snatched and tumbled and ducked. As yet they were not discovered. Kit working madly in the belly of the boat could see nothing; but afar he could hear the Parson's terrible roar, and Knapp's crisp, "_Ow's that-a-tat, ow's that?_" Somehow, only the Lord knew how, those two inspired warriors still kept the ring. It was great, but it could not last. The end must come, and it must come soon. Anxiously the boy peeped over the side. The tide seemed to mock them. With what a swoop it rushed to their rescue, and with what a scream of derision it withdrew again! Kit compared it unconsciously to the to and fro of the emotions in his heart, now surging him heaven-high, now leaving him stranded.