“You hear? Get off this boat or I’ll have Billy butt you over the Eiffel Tower! What do you mean by coming here and telling me such a cock and bull story as that?”
“’Deed them is my pets! And if you don’t give ’em up to me I’ll call me chum and prove it.”
“Get off my boat, you stupid liar, or I’ll call the police!”
“I’ll go get the police meself and have you arrested for holdin’ stolen goods!”
“You will, will you? Well, here, on your way there you better take a bath in the river and wash up. They’ll be better pleased to see you after you have had a clean-up than the way you look now,” and with that the Captain walked over to the man, took him by the seat of his trousers and the collar of his coat and threw him overboard into the river. The fellow being a regular wharf rat swam ashore, swearing vengeance on the Captain, but he never showed up afterwards.
“Well, that fellow displayed more cheek than I ever saw before, asking me to give up Billy, Stubby and Button on the strength of his saying they were his pets. But it goes to show that he had read the advertisements in the paper, and since others may have read them also, I guess we better pull up anchor and proceed on our way.”
It was an hour after this when all were at supper but Dick, who was sitting whistling and braiding ropes, when a dapper young American orderly appeared at the gangplank and called out: “Hey, there! Have you seen a big white goat, a little yellow dog and a black cat around here any time to-day?”
“No, sir; I haven’t laid me two eyes on them,” said Dick with a straight face, though his good eye did wink once or twice at the fib. “Why, sir? Have you lost them?”
“No, I haven’t, but one of them belongs to my regiment and the other two to two other regiments. And we have been looking everywhere for them and advertising in all the papers. But every time we hear that they have been seen in a certain locality and go to get them, they are gone. And I just heard this afternoon that three animals answering to their description had been seen coming this way.”