"It is the same man we saw in the whale-boat," declared Eugene, his voice rendered husky by excitement. "I know him, even if he hasn't got his gray suit on."
"I confess that I can't see any resemblance," said Bab, taking his glass down from his eyes long enough to bring it to a better focus.
It would have required a person with a very lively imagination to recognise anybody at that distance, especially in such clothes as those in which the captain was dressed. He wore a tarpaulin on his head, a red shirt open at the throat, and a pair of coarse trowsers, which were thrust into the tops of heavy sea boots; and as some of these articles had been made for larger, and others for smaller men than himself, they fitted him oddly enough.
"Ship ahoy!" roared Uncle Dick.
"Ay, ay, sir!" shouted the captain of the whaler.
"What ship is that?" asked Uncle Dick.
The answer was given in a loud tone of voice, but the words were indistinct. The captain talked as if he had a mouthful of something. The only part of the reply that the Stranger's crew understood was that the ship was seventeen months out of Nantucket, and that she had nine hundred barrels of oil in the hold.
"What does he say is the name of his ship, Mr. Baldwin?" asked Uncle Dick.
"I understood him to say Eli Coon, sir," said the officer.
"That sounds wonderfully like Tycoon, doesn't it?" whispered George.