"Hurray!" cried Johnnie, and next moment he and his strange partner were whirling round and round on the quarter-deck, in one of the maddest, merriest dances that surely ever yet was seen.
And I don't believe there was a soul on board who was not rejoiced that Old Pen had returned once again.
That evening they were far away on the quiet and lonesome sea, and, standing by the fire in the saloon warming his flat feet, one by one, as usual, was Old Pen, while near him, sound asleep, lay Vike.
"Awfully good of the bird to come off in time, wasn't it, boys?" said the skipper, relighting his pipe. "If he hadn't come back I should have believed I was about to be deserted by all my good fortune.
"We are glad to see you, Pen, and hope you'll never leave us again. But what put it into your silly noddle to go away at all, Pen?"
Pen made two hops of the space between him and the captain. Then leaning his head on his knee he looked up drolly with one eye--which being half-closed gave him the appearance of winking.
"I did think of getting spliced, you know," he seemed to say, "and more than one lovely Lady Pen asked me to fly with her to a foreign shore. Nary a fly," says I, "not if Pen knows it. Marriage is a precarious kind of experiment, so after flirting around for a bit I remembered my old friends and just floated off again."
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Fine weather all the way to the Cape, with stunsails set 'low and aloft most of the time.
Ah, reader, there isn't much to beat the life a sailor leads after all!