His tales of sea-going and sea-roving were wonderful indeed. How much of them was truth and how much pure invention, the older Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil did not know. However, they forgave his “historical inaccuracies” because of the entertainment they derived from his yarns.
Tess and Dot listened to the old fellow with perfect confidence in his achievements. Had he not known—in a moment—what it was that shot water up through the holes in the clam flat? The smaller girls listened to old Kuk Somes with unshaken confidence.
“And how did the pirates get your leg, Mr. Kuk?” asked Tess. “Your really truly leg, I mean.”
She and Dot were sitting on the edge of the tent-platform, under the awning, with their bare feet in the sand, with Tom Jonah lying comfortably between them. The dog had a brooding eye upon the clam digger, who sat on a broken lobster trap a few feet away.
“Huh! them pi-rats?” queried the clam digger. “Well—er—now, did I say it was pi-rats as got my leg, shipmet?”
“Yes, you did, sir.” Dot hastened to bolster up her sister’s statement of fact. “And you said it was on the Spanish Main.”
“Well!” declared the old man, “so it was, an’ so they did. Pi-rats it was, shipmet. An’ I’ll tell yer the how of it.
“I was carpenter’s mate on the Spankin’ Sal, what sailed from Bosting to Rio, touchin’ at some West Injy ports on the way—pertic’larly Porto Rico, which is a big merlasses port. We had a good part of our upper holt stowed with warmin’ pans for the merlasses planters——”
“Oh, Mr. Kuk!” ejaculated Tess in rather a pained voice. “Isn’t that a mistake? Warming pans?”
“Not by a joblot it ain’t no mistake!” returned the old man. “Warming pans I sez, an’ warming pans I sticks to.”