But he did not say it at all as though he meant it. Alice said afterward she thought her sneeze had broken in on the captain's denunciation of the proposed sea voyage.
"It was just as though he were going to say it was the most foolish and nonsensical thing of which he had ever heard," Alice explained. "Oh, why did I have to go and sneeze just then?"
"Did you want to hear what he would have said?" asked her sister.
"Yes, I did. I don't like Captain Brisco."
"You mustn't say such things," Ruth cautioned her. But this was some time later.
Just at present the commander of the Mary Ellen was trying to make his unexpected guests feel a welcome he rather grudgingly extended.
"We have been over looking at the Ajax," explained Russ, "and we thought we'd stop in and pay you a call."
"Oh, yes, I'm to carry the Ajax on deck, I believe," the commander said. "Well, you'll find us all pretty busy here," he went on. "Mr. Jepson, will you kindly go forward and see how the men are coming on with that caulking?"
It was a very different voice from the one he had used when Ruth, Alice and the others had been unseen listeners.
"What about the mainmast?" asked Sailor Jack. "It's sprung, as I told you it was, and unless those stays——"