“I won’t make him too long,” said the sailor solemnly. “Let’s see, sir; this here ship’s ’bout hundred and fifty foot long.”
“Yes, Dick, but the boa-constrictor was longer than that,” said the lad, laughing.
“I won’t go to deceive you, Mister Roberts,” said Dick, “no more than I did when I was learning you how to knot and splice. That there boa-constrictor was quite a hundred foot long.”
“Get out!”
“Well, say fifty, sir.”
“No, nor yet fifty, Dick.”
“Well, sir, not to zaggerate about such things, if that there sarpent as I see with my own eyes—”
“Why you couldn’t see it with anybody else’s, Dick.”
“No, sir, but I might have seen it wi’ a spy glass. This there sarpent as I see it lying down stretched out straight was a good twenty-five foot.”
“Perhaps that may have been, Dick,” said Bob Roberts, thoughtfully.