“I’ll give you two dollars and a half, and not a cent more.”
“I don’t care to sell him, but as he has cleaned out all the rats at my place I guess I’ll let you have him.”
The sailors gave him the money for the goat and the dog, and he drove off a happy man, but he did not let the grin show on his face until he was out of sight of the sailors.
Now this was a great streak of luck for Billy and Stubby, and was just what they wanted, so they followed their new masters on board without giving any trouble and by night their ship had sailed out of port and was on her way to San Francisco.
An Unexpected Trip.
AFTER an uneventful trip, they sailed one day into the beautiful harbor of San Francisco, called the Golden Gate, and Billy and Stubby were looking forward to a good time on shore, and planning what they would do, when, all unexpectedly, after landing, they got mixed up in a bunch of cattle, and were driven aboard a big boat that was being loaded with live cattle for Japan, and try as he would, Billy could not extricate himself from them or avoid the long whips of the men who were driving them. As for Stubby, he could easily have slipped away, but he preferred to follow Billy, and that is how our travelers found themselves bound for Japan without a day’s rest on shore after they came up the coast from Mexico to San Francisco.
This was not at all what they wanted, for they were tired of the ocean, but they were helpless, and what was worse, Billy stood in danger of being killed and sold for mutton chops, for goat chops are often sold for such. Stubby was afraid he, too, would be killed and made into sausage, for he had heard that the Chinese eat dog meat, and if they did, why not the Japanese? So with heavy hearts they saw the shore recede farther and farther from them and the Golden Gate sink into the blue waters of the Pacific, leaving them nothing to look at but water, water all around them.
The only thing that varied the monotony of the long trip to Japan was their short stop at the Sandwich Islands, where Billy and Stubby were taken ashore for a run by the cook and his assistant, who were both Japanese and were returning home to fight for their country against Russia.