“Playing doggo, eh?” he muttered. “Well, we’ll see.” He looked over at his mate with a grin, and said, “Now, you just tell that story of yours again, Mr. Briggs.”
The mate nodded.
“It was this way, sir,” he started, gazing up at the overhead with an expression of shocked innocence. “Just before suppertime, I happened to be passing the galley and saw these two.” He lowered his eyes and jabbed a dirty thumb in the direction of Sandy and Jerry. Then he raised his eyes again and said, “They were playing catch with a can of tomatoes.”
Jerry gasped in indignation, and Sandy quickly gave him a warning nudge.
“That’s what they were doing, sir—throwing it back and forth like a couple of schoolkids at a picnic. Then this black-haired fellow here, he let go a good one and it went right through the grandstander’s hands and hit the can of fat on the stove and knocked it over on the fire. And then, sir,” the mate concluded, a note of smugness in his voice, “then, sir, the fat was really in the fire.”
With a look of gloating, the captain swung his eyes on Sandy and Jerry—and that was when Sandy opened his mouth and said, “He’s a liar.”
Almost the moment that the words dropped from his lips, Sandy Steele wished he could have bitten his tongue in two. But he had finally had to give in to the resentment that had been smoldering inside him almost from the moment he had walked aboard the James Kennedy. But, to say that, after all his good advice to Jerry! He glanced over at his friend, half expecting him to be disgusted with him.
He was grinning!
Then Sandy had to laugh, too—if not from the delight so plain on Jerry’s saucy face, then from the look of injury on the face of the mate. Mr. Briggs actually acted as though he had been unfairly accused! So, Sandy laughed—and when he did, Captain West arose from his chair with a roar of rage.
“Get out of here! You smooth-faced, insubordinate little firebugs! Get back to your quarters and stand by to face a court of inquiry on charges of arson and insubordination! That’ll teach you to laugh at me and call my mate a liar! Eh? How about that, eh? How will your friend, Old Man Kennedy, like that, eh, when he hears that his white-faced schoolboys are headed for some Buffalo jail? And you, Mr. Briggs, I’m ordering you to keep these two under lock and key until we get to Buffalo.” Then, puffing up his chest like a giant bullfrog, Captain West issued a final roar: