“Why, a-mussy me, sir, I see one looking over the stones yonder with my own eyes.”
“You saw a big, cat-like creature, with its round, dark head. It must have been a panther, or leopard, or something of that kind.”
The sailor looked at him and scratched his ear.
“Mean it, sir?” he said.
“Of course I do. Come along.”
Oliver went on after his two companions, and the sailors followed.
“How about the canniballs, Tommy?” asked Billy Wriggs with a chuckle.
“Here, don’t you spoil your figger-head by making them faces,” said Smith, shortly. “I was right enough, so own up like a man.”
“You says, says you, that it was canniballs as had got a pot on over a fire, and that they was cooking one of our mates.”
“Loin! how I do hate a man as ’zaggerates! I only said I hoped it warn’t. It’s you as put the pot on.”