“Hum! I know you! But I may have—er—been hasty in hitting you,” went on Captain Sudlip, lamely. “And if I was I—er—apologize.”
And with this he walked off, and did not show himself again until the next day.
“I reckon we got square,” said Darry, later on, when they talked the matter over. “He’ll be mad over this affair every time he thinks about it.”
“It was all right enough for you fellows,” grumbled Hockley, who was nursing a swollen lip. “You didn’t catch what I got.”
“Why didn’t you strike back, Glummy?” asked Mark.
“I didn’t get the chance, the professor came up so quickly. Otherwise I would have wiped up the deck with him,” blustered the would-be bully.
All of the others had their opinion about Hockley’s ability to “wipe up the deck” with anybody, but they said nothing on that point, for certainly he had caught the bitter end of the joke.
“And now we’ve got to wait and see how Captain Sudlip treats us for the rest of the trip,” said Mark, when the meeting broke up.
“And how he treats January Jones,” said Darry. “Don’t forget that poor fellow. My! what would Captain Sudlip do to him if he knew he was the one who had brought us the news?”
As might be expected, Jason Sudlip was in anything but a sweet temper during the days spent in making the run around the western end of Cuba to Havana. But he managed to steer clear of Professor Strong and his party, and the meals furnished, while not particularly good, were still such as to be above complaint.