Читать книгу The Safety First Club and the Flood онлайн

26 страница из 54

“Well, right here’s one of the smoothest places you can find anywhere; you need spiked shoes to stand on it. Farther on, though, it is rougher—rough enough to give you half a show, anyway. I saw how it was and ran along a bit. If you’d thought to do that, you’d have been all right. You made just as good a try as I did.”

Varley glanced at the other keenly. “Look here! First off, you were starting straight out just as I did. Then you stopped, and changed your scheme. You had the real hunch. I was stood on my head, and you got away with things. And all the difference was, you took time to think.”

“I tried to,” said Sam quietly.

“It was a clever plan. But I say!” Varley paused an instant, his expression half admiring, half uncertain. “Come now! You talk about belonging to a Safety First Club, yet you pile in in a case like this——”

Sam interrupted him. “Our kind of Safety First doesn’t mean wrapping yourself up in cotton wool and stowing yourself away on a shelf. It doesn’t mean dodging all risks—you’ve got to take some. But it does mean finding the best way to take them, if they seem to be necessary, and cutting them out, if they’re not necessary. That’s all there is to it.”