Look out, Mr. Mouse! If that man there beside you once gives a twitch at your curls, he’ll pull something more than hair––perhaps a little scalp with it!
“Oh!” was the sound that came back.
“Yes, sir; and the other beautiful lady next the commodore is her sister. She had a son just mademoiselle’s age, who was murdered by pirates off Jamaica ever so many years ago, and Commodore Cleveland chased them in a ship he was first lieutenant of––my father commanded the ship––she was the old ‘Scourge.’”
“Hold your tongue!” came from the cot where the spare pillow was thrown from.
“Ho!” said the military chieftain; but if the room had not been so dark, the way his eyes opened and emitted an icy glare of surprise would have made Tiny Mouse shiver with cold.
“Oh dear, yes, colonel, I heard the commodore tell all about it the other night on board the frigate. He thought I was asleep, but I kept awake through the best part of it.”
“The best part of it?”
“Why, sir, how an old one-eyed Spaniard deceived my father, and 249 sent him on a fool’s errand from St. Jago down to the Isle of Pines, and afterward how the ‘Scourge’ chased the piratical schooner in a hurricane for ever so long, clear away to the coast of Darien, where they blew her out of water, and killed every scoundrel on board!”
Not every one, Mr. Mouse. There is the very greatest of those scoundrels grinding his teeth and glaring your way at your elbow.
“What was the name of that cape, Darcantel, where the schooner was destroyed? No, I won’t be quiet; the colonel wants to hear all about it. There’s a good fellow, tell me!”