"Perhaps. Well, he felt in all his pockets for a rattan, and he happened to get hold of the tip of his tail. Now he seed the bos'en lugging hard to get the rattan out of his pocket, for it had got entangled with the lanyard of his jack-knife, and so Jocko tugs precious hard at his tail, presuming it to be a rattan likewise, I s'pose, and, by Jove, if he doesn't pull it right out."
"Come, now," cried Joe Basalt, with a grunt, "I ain't agoing to swaller that tale."
"It's a fact. Billy Longbow was the most truthful pal I ever had—out came his nether rattan."
"Well, what next?"
"Nothing next," answered Sam Mason, with a sly look. "That was the end of Jocko's tail, and it's the end of mine too."
Now while they were engaged in listening to Sam Mason's Billy Longbow anecdote, they saw Mr. Mole come out of the deck saloon, where he had been dozing.
He walked up the deck with a certain apparent unsteadiness of gait.
"Old Mole is half seas over," said Harry Girdwood.
"I'll tell you what. Wouldn't it be a lark if we could get him to strut up and down with Nero, without knowing it?"
"That's more easily said than done, I imagine."