"Draw it mild, Sam."
"Well, that's what Billy Longbow said—a hundred feet long."
"Oh, damme!" cried Joe Basalt, "make it ninety-nine, Sam, for decency sake."
"I won't give in half a foot," persisted Sam. "Well, when Snowball sees Muster Crockydile so near as there was no getting out of the way, he says—'You jist wait a bit, Massa Crock, I'll gib yar suffin to sniff at.' An' so, without more ado, he unscrews one of his wooden legs, and walks into the animal's jaws."
"Oh, oh, oh!"
A general groan of incredulity.
"Absurd," said Mr. Mole, without looking up from his task of watching, in case the shark should again show itself.
"A fact, sir," said Sam Mason. "Well, he holds up his wooden leg perpendicular and the greedy crock comes on with a snap, but the wooden leg was a trifle more than he could get over; there it stuck and propped his great ugly maws wide open; out crawls Snowball, a kind of sorter modern Jonah, none the worse for it."
"Bravo, Sam!"
"Ho! it is quite true, for it's Billy Longbow's version of it," said the modest Sam.