was."

"Nonsense. You can't grasp what a terrible strait we're in."

"Oh, yes, I can. We're buried alive."

"Well, isn't that horrible?" said Aleck.

"Pretty tidy, but not half so bad as being buried dead. It would be all
over then; but as we're buried alive perhaps we shall be able to unbury
ourselves."

"You must be half mad," said Aleck, angrily, "or you'd never talk so
lightly."

"Lightly? I don't talk lightly. I'm as serious as a judge."

"But what are we to do?"

"Wait a bit and let's think. We can live down here for ever so long;
that is, as long as the rations last. Then we shall have to try some
other way out."

"Yes; but what way?"

The midshipman pointed towards the dimly-seen submerged arch.

"Can you swim?" he said.

"Of course. Pretty well."

"And dive?"

"Yes."

"Then my notion is that we take it as coolly as we can till we think
it's a suitable time. Then we'll strip, make a couple of bundles of our
clothes, go in as near to that arch as we can, and then try to dive
under and out to the daylight."

Aleck raised the lanthorn to bring its dim light full upon his
companion's face, gazing at him hard as if in doubt of his sanity. For
the words were spoken as calmly and coolly as if he had been proposing
some ordinary jump into clear water at a bathing-place.

But he only saw that the speaker's countenance was perfectly unruffled,
and his next words convinced him that he was speaking in all
seriousness.

"Well, don't look so horrified," he said, half laughingly. "You haven't
been bragging, have you? Don't say you can't swim?"

"Oh, I can swim easily enough," said Aleck, impatiently; "but suppose
one rose too soon, right up amongst those rugged rocks, with the
sea-wrack hanging down in long strips ready to strangle us?"

"I'm not going to suppose anything of the sort," said the midshipman.
"Why should you suppose such horrors? I might just as well say: suppose
a great shark should rush in open-mouthed to swallow me down and then
grab you by the leg, throw you over on to his back, and carry you about
till he felt hungry again?"

"But you don't see the danger?" cried Aleck.

"And don't want to see it. I daresay it is dangerous, but nearly
everything is if you look at it in that way. Well, what now? Why do
you look at me like that?"

"Because I don't understand you," said Aleck. "Yesterday you seemed as
weak as a girl, while now you are proposing impossible things,