"I can't.

Let me lie here and die." Dark as it was I could just make out Bigley's actions, for I was in the fore part of the boat, and he before me.
"Bale, I say! Do you hear?
Bale!" he shouted in his deep gruff voice.
"I can't," moaned Bob piteously.
"Then we shall sink--we shall go to the bottom." "Yes; we're going to die," groaned Bob.
"No, we're not," cried Bigley in a fierce angry way that seemed different to anything I had before heard from him.

"Get up and bale!" "No, no," groaned Bob again.
"Get up and bale!" thundered Bigley, and I felt hot and angry against him, as I heard a dull thud, and it did not need Bob Chowne's cry of pain to tell me that Bigley had given him a kick on the ribs.
"Oh, Big!" I cried.
"Row!" he roared at me; and then to Bob: "Now, will you bale ?" "Yes," groaned Bob, struggling to his knees, and, holding on with one hand, he began to dip the baler in regularly and slowly, throwing out about a pint of water every time.
"Faster!" shouted Bigley; "faster, I say." "Oh!" moaned poor Bob; but he obeyed, and it seemed a puzzle to me that our big companion, whom we bantered and teased, and led a sorry life at school, should somehow in this time of peril take the lead over us, and force us to behave in a way that could only have been expected of a crew obeying the captain of a boat.
I bent forward to Bigley as we kept on with the regular chop chop of the oars, making no effort to get nearer to the shore, only to keep the boat's head level, and I whispered in his ear: "Shall we get to shore again!" "Yes," he said confidently; "only you two must do what I tell you.

I must be skipper now.

Go on, you, Bob Chowne!" he roared.