“Oh, you pleasure trip!” Billy merrily commented.
“You surely didn’t swallow that story?”
“You know I didn’t, Henri,” returned Billy. “When is a dummy not a dummy? Answer: When someone thinks he is what he isn’t. How’s that, Henri?”
“As good grammar as could be expected on a trick ship,” acknowledged Henri.
The sailors even changed their faces with their clothes, their jaws fitting as tightly as their sea-going outfits, and, as far as the captain himself, he was no longer set up in landscape style. Straight as a poker he stood on the newly discovered bridge like an image of lead.
“Wouldn’t jar me if Herr Roque showed up with horns on his forehead instead of in spectacle trimming.”
Billy was preparing for the next fall of the wand.
While the boys were watching the hoist of the anchor, following a curt command from the officer on the bridge, and a distant chime was proclaiming the midnight hour, Billy was made aware that someone, not of the regular crew, was standing at his elbow.
The voice was that of Herr Roque, but the speaker could never for a single moment be materially taken for the late elderly spectacled merchant.
“How now, young sirs; is it well with you?”