"Crocodiles can't live in salt water, and as the Red Sea is exceedingly briny, I don't understand how the ones you captured could have been there and submitted to being harnessed as you did it, without offering to make a meal of you."

A rather startled look crossed Tim's face.

He thoughtfully rubbed his big red nose and gasped:

"Gee whiz!"

The fact was Tim was an awful liar.

He seldom spun a yarn without being tripped up.

That is the trouble with most liars; they generally make an error in their stories which won't stand analysis.

"Will you be kind enough to explain how those saurians happened to be in that sea in such a docile frame of mind, Tim?" asked Timberlake, with a provoking smile of derision.

"No, sir," flatly answered the old sailor, who was utterly at a loss how to clear himself. "The fact are, sir, as I never gives explanations e' my yarns, an'—"

But here he was interrupted.