“Look over on the other side of the deck and you will see what I mean.”
“Jupiter! How ever did they get here? And me following them from place to place only to be told they had just been seen turning a corner here and a corner there!”
“But why did you let them out in the first place?”
“Me let them out? Why, bless your life, that big goat let himself out after breaking up the whole of the inside of our boat and butting the door down as if it had been made of paper and me off the hatchway as if I had been a bale of cotton. You don’t know that goat, you don’t!”
“Come down here, I say, and see all the damage that goat did,” called the Captain’s wife again.
“Well, thunder and lightning! He did leave a pretty mess, didn’t he?” exclaimed the Captain when he saw what Billy had done.
“Oh, Captain, come up! There is a man wants to see you,” called One-Eyed Dick down the hatchway.
When the Captain went on deck, he saw standing talking to Dick a poorly dressed, shifty-eyed individual. “Well, my man, what can I do for you?” asked the Captain, but as he passed one of his sailors he said in a low voice to him, “Get those animals below as fast as you can, and keep them out of sight!”
The sailor obeyed, and he got Stubby and Button down but when he came up for Billy he heard the man say,
“I’ve come for me pets. And you need not try to hide them. I tracked ’em here not half an hour ago and I been waitin’ for youse to come back as I didn’t like to take ’em without tellin’ ye that them belongs to me.”