"Oh, yes!" cried the boy; "I forgot. It was only my fun."
"Your fun!" cried the sailor, looking his ugliest. "Don't you cry, my pretty. If ever he teases you I'll mut'ny, and never help him to rig a boat agen. And look here: if he don't say he's sorry, I won't do this here."
"But I am sorry," cried the boy. "Oh, I say, Dot, don't be a little silly. I tell you it was only my fun."
"Your fun!" growled "Jack," passing his left arm round Dot, and looking very savage, as he held up a great rough finger at the offender, and shook his head at him warningly. "Now look-ye here. There was some boys once as stood round chuckin' stones at some frogs in a pond, and——"
"Yes, I know," cried the Skipper hastily, "and the frogs said—"
"Avast!" roared the sailor—"nay, I don't mean they said 'Avast,' that's what I says. Don't you int'rup' older folks, as is talking to you for your good. Mebbe you do know what the frogs said, but it won't hurt you to hear it agen. The frogs said—I mean croaked out—'Avast!'"
"Why! you told us the frogs didn't say 'Avast,'" cried the boy.
"Did I? Ay! so I did. It wasn't 'Avast'; it were 'Belay there! Don't do that,' they says. And then the boys said, just as you did, 'It was only my fun.' And then the frogs says: 'Ha!' they says, 'what's fun to you means stones come aboard and sinkin' us, and sendin' on us to the bottom.'"
"That they didn't!" cried the boy archly.
"Well, I don't say it was them werry words, but what they says meant it, and here you will come bringing your fun, as you calls it, on deck, and hurtin' your pretty little sister; and you calls yourself a man."