“I sensed some of that. And as the shanty had about come to anchor, I answered and spoke my mind.
“'When you take me back home!' I says. 'When you do! Why, you crack-brained, murderin' lunatic, I wouldn't cruise in that hell wagon of yours again for the skipper's wages on a Cunarder. No, nor the mate's hove in!'
“And that shover he put his head back and laughed and laughed and laughed.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE CRUISE OF THE RED CAR
“I don't wonder he laughed,” observed Wingate, who seemed to enjoy irritating his friend. “You must have been good as a circus.”
“Humph!” grunted the depot master. “If I remember right you said YOU wa'n't any ten-cent side show under similar circumstances, Barzilla. Heave ahead, Bailey!”
Captain Stitt, unruffled, resumed:
“I tell you, I had to take it that evenin',” he said. “All the time I was cookin' and while he was eatin' supper, Billings was rubbin' it into me about my bein' scared. Called me all the saltwater-hero names he could think of—'Hobson' and 'Dewey' and the like of that, usin' em sarcastic, of course. Finally, he said he remembered readin' in school, when he was little, about a girl hero, name of Grace Darlin'. Said he cal'lated, if I didn't mind, he'd call me Grace, 'cause it was heroic and yet kind of fitted in with my partic'lar brand of bravery. I didn't answer much; he had me down, and I knew it. Likewise I judged he was more or less out of his head; no sane man would yell the way he done aboard that automobile.