"Why," said Bill, scratching his head, "a gaboo is—well now, let's see—ah, yes, a gaboo is a good rhyme for blue."
"If you do anything like that again we shall have to hold a court-martial and have you thrown overboard to feed your gaboos," laughed Frank.
"Well, that's what you call poetic license," protested Bill.
"From now on, yours is revoked," declared Frank, "but, seriously,
Bill, do you know anything about shark fishing?"
"Do I?" demanded the old shellback. "Well, when I was in these very waters in the Scaramouch we caught one with a bit of pork that weighed—the shark, I mean, not the pork—I forget just what, and wouldn't say, for fear you might think I was prevastigating, but it was twenty-four foot long."
"Oh, come, Bill, not twenty-four," protested Harry.
"That's what it was," stoutly asserted Bill, rummaging in a locker for a shark-hook.
"Why, the biggest shark recorded is only eighteen feet in length," protested Billy.
"Don't know nothing 'bout records, Master Billy, but I do know that this yar varmint was twenty-four."
"Did you measure him?" asked Frank.