"Heads and ears and tongues," I said; "you ought to have brought some potatoes, so we'd have eyes." He thinks I'm funny, but I just say those things to make him laugh, so as he'll feel good.
Then I took all the stuff into the galley and put it in the food locker. I was just crunching up the newspaper that they brought the corn in, and was going to throw it out of the window, when I saw a heading that read: Fishermen Have Harrowing Adventure. Oh, boy, didn't I sit down on the barrel and read that article through! First, I looked to see the date of the paper and I saw it was a couple of days old. After I read that article I cut it out, because I knew I was going to tell you about all these things. So here it is now for you to read:
FISHERMEN HAVE HARROWING ADVENTURE
The fishing schooner Stella B arrived in port to-day with two castaways, who had drifted for three days in an open boat in the stormy waters off Rockaway. The two men, Mike Corby and Dan McCann, hail from Jersey, and were carried out to sea in their twenty-two foot launch from about a mile south of Sea Gate, where they were fishing.
Their engine broke down and their small boat, beaten by the waves, was leaking rapidly when they were picked up. One of the men was unconscious from lack of nourishment and the other in a state of utter exhaustion from bailing, in an all but futile effort to keep the frail little craft above water. After being resuscitated, one of the men gave a vague account of having encountered a waterlogged life-boat containing several people who had perished from exposure, and of certain papers and possessions found on one of them.
Later when a reporter made an effort to see the men for confirmation of this statement, neither could be found. Both are said to have carried considerable money on their persons, but this was explained by the exceptionally large catches of fish which they sold, during their fishing trip. No means of tracing them is known since the boat, in which one of them resumed his journey home after repairs, had no license number.
Maybe you think I didn't read that article twice. And it made me wonder a lot of things about that fishing trip. One thing, it looked as if they might have had more adventures than Lieutenant Donnelle had told me about, and maybe he didn't want to tell me everything—that's what I thought. Anyway, he didn't say anything about a life-boat, that's sure. But maybe he forgot to.
Just the same I wondered if maybe he had any other reason for being in such a hurry and so excited, kind of. Then I remembered how he said he would tell me all about it some day. Anyway, I said, he's had a lot of adventures, that's sure. You bet I'd like to have a lot of adventures like that.