Part 29 (2/2)
”Well, look sharp, or I shall fall asleep with my head resting on my arms.”
”Well, I'll tell you,” said Roberts. ”You see that solid lump of pudding?”
”I told you before I can't see it.”
”Feel it then.”
”No, I'll be hanged if I do! Why should I feel a nasty piece of cold pudding?”
”Don't be so jolly particular; it's quite dry.”
”Look here, d.i.c.k, are you going off your head?”
”I thought I was when the idea came, for it set me laughing so that I could not stop myself.”
”Come, tell me what it all means, or I shall go below to my berth. What is there in all this?”
”Poison, I tell you.”
”Yes, you told me before; but what does it mean?”
”You see that lump of pudding; well, there's poison in it.”
”d.i.c.k Roberts, I'm hot and easily aggravated. If you go on like this I shall be as quarrelsome as you were this afternoon.”
”Well, there, it was all my idea that I had this afternoon. I got that lump of pudding from the cook, took it down to my berth, pulled out my knife, put the box on the side of the pudding, and cut out a piece exactly the size of the box.”
”Wh-a-a-t! You mean you cut a piece out of the box just the size of the pudding?”
”No, I don't, my son. You don't understand yet. Can't you see I'm talking about a pill-box?”
”Oh-h-h!”
”Now don't you see? I cut a hole in the pudding and slipped the box in, and then made a stopper of the pudding I had cut out, and corked up the hole with the box inside.”
”I begin to see now,” said Murray. ”A pill-box full of poison to kill the shark that swallows the poison.”
”I don't care whether it kills the fish or no as long as I get rid of the stuff.”
”Now you are getting confused again. Why should you try to poison a shark like this? What good would it do--what difference would one shark make out of the thousands which infest the sea?”
”Oh, Franky, what a Dummkopf you are, as the Germans say!”
”Don't care what the Germans say, and I dare say I am a stupid-head, for I can't make out what you are driving at.”
”You can't? Why, I'm going to make the shark take the poison instead of taking it myself.”
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