CHAPTER I.
A LIVELY TIME.
Chu! chu! chu!
The sound came from the exhaust pipe of the little steamer.
“Chew! chew chew!” grunted Bruce Browning, lazily looking up at the escaping steam. “Do you know what that makes me think of?”
“Vot?” asked Hans Dunnerwust, who did not like the glance that Browning gave him, and who felt mentally sore because he had been laughed at for trying to get sauerkraut for breakfast. “Vat vos id you makes id t’ink uf?”
“Of the time you kicked that hornet’s nest, supposing it to be a football.”
“Py shimminy, uf dot feetpall did gick me und gid stung in more as lefendeen hundret blaces, id didn’t chewed me!”
“No, but you chewed the tobacco to put on the stings, and that old exhaust pipe sounds just like Merry, when he kept saying to you, ‘Chew! chew! chew!’—and you chewed like a goat!”
“Und peen so seasick vrom id! Ach! I vish dot dose hornets hat kilt me deat ven I stinged dhem.”