I turned sharply round, holding tightly with one hand; but Shock's back
was turned to me, and he was picking apples most diligently.
I looked about, and there was no one else near, the trees being too
small for anyone to hide behind their trunks. Shock did not look in my
direction, but worked away, and I at last, as the sting grew less, went
on with mine.
"I know it was him," I said to myself angrily. "If I catch him at it--"
I made some kind of mental vow about what I would do, finished filling
my basket, went down and emptied it, and ascended the ladder again just
as he was doing the same, but I might have been a hundred miles away for
all the notice he took of me.
I had just begun picking again, and was glancing over my shoulder to see
if he was going to play any antics, when he began to ascend his ladder,
and I went on.
Thump!
A big lump of earth struck me right in the back, and as I looked angrily
round I saw Shock fall from the top to the bottom of his ladder, and I
felt that horrible sensation that people call your heart in your mouth.
He rose to a sitting position, put his hand to his head, and shouted
out: "Who's that throwing lumps?"
Nobody answered; and as I saw him run up the ladder again it occurred to
me that it was more a slip down than a fall from the ladder, and I had
just come to this conclusion when, seeing that I was watching him, he
made me start and cling tightly, for he suddenly fell again.
It was like lightning almost. One moment he was high up on the ladder,
the next he was at the foot; but this time I was able to make out that
he guided himself with his arms and his legs, and that it was really
more a slide down than a fall.
I turned from him in disgust, annoyed with myself for letting him cheat
me into the belief that he had met with an accident, and went on picking
apples.
"He's no better than a monkey," I said to myself.
Whiz!
An apple came so close to my ear, thrown with great violence, that I
felt it almost brush me, and I turned so sharply round that I swung
myself off the ladder, and had I not clung tightly by my hands I must
have fallen.
As it was, the ladder turned right round, in spite of its broadly set
foot, and I hung beneath it, while my half-filled basket was in my place
at the top.
The distance was not great, but I felt startled as I hung there, when,
to my utter astonishment, Shock threw himself round, twisted his ladder,
and hung beneath just as I did, and then went down by his hands from
round to round of the ladder, turned it back, ran up again, and went on
picking apples as if nothing was wrong.