"Hold on till you see it, governor!" said Atkins, fumbling in his pockets, and finally producing a huge brass time-piece, which ticked so loudly that it could be heard by every one in the cave. "It's a thing a feller can't get every day."
"I don't care, I don't want to see it," replied Sam. "Here's the thing we go by," he added, picking up the list he had made out. "Read that, an' then read the book, an' see if you can find any thing about a watch in either of them. Crusoe didn't have no time-piece, an' we ain't a goin' to have none, neither."
"I say he did have a watch!" insisted Atkins. "Don't the book say that after he eat his dinner, he lay down an' slept till two o'clock? How did he know when to get up if he didn't have a watch?"
"I don't know nothin' about that! If he'd had a watch the book would have said so."
"But what shall I do with this? I give a sail an' a pair of good oars fur it, an' the feller said he wouldn't never trade back!"
"You can pitch it in the harbor, if you have a mind to," said Sam. "It sha'n't go on this expedition so long as I'm governor."
"I think this is a purty how-de-do," said Atkins. "If I can't have things my way sometimes I won't go. I don't believe there ever was such a cove as Robinson Crusoe, nohow."
"Eh!" exclaimed Sam, in astonishment. "Do you mean to say that Crusoe never lived on that island all by himself fur so many years? Who writ this yere book, then?"
"Some feller made it up all out of his own head!" said Atkins, boldly.