“I ain’t exactly deserting, I cal’late. If I’d been able to pitch into that crew and shake the devil out of ’em, I’d stayed on deck. But–––”
“I want you to go back with me. It’s getting too funny to miss!”
“I ain’t got much hankering for them officers’ meeting, Beth. It makes me feel like busting chairs on their heads.”
“But you must go back! You should hear what he is saying to them. Come!”
Before the seaman could obey the summons, 41 Miss Edna Splinter emerged from the rear door. She hurried toward the two. Miss Splinter was one of those fine spinsters which one so often finds stranded in small villages located near large cities. She was one of the few friends of the Captain in Little River.
“It’s the most disgusting thing I ever saw or heard!” declared Miss Splinter, angrily stamping her foot.
“It’s really too funny for words!” exclaimed Elizabeth.
“What in tarnation is he doing to them?”
“Doing to them!” flashed Miss Splinter indignantly. “My word! It’s what they’re trying to do to him. It is positively disgraceful.”
The seaman decided that a scene which could have such opposite effects on two of his best friends must at least be interesting. He knocked the tobacco from his pipe and followed them inside. As he listened, his interest grew, not so much in the ecclesiastical storm of big words, as in the wildly gesticulating clergymen. The moderator had risen and was rapping loudly for order.