"Never mind, Gadget...!" interposed the skipper, changing the subject. "So you determined to see the world, did you, my boy?"
"Yessir!" came the reply, and again the sharp eyes twinkled.
"Well, you shall go round the world with me, if you are a good boy. But, if you don't behave, mark my words"--and here the captain raised his voice as if in anger--"I'll drop you overboard by parachute, and leave you behind! Do you understand?"
The urchin promised to behave himself, and, in language redolent of Whitechapel, began to thank the captain effusively.
"There, that will do! Take him away, and get him a proper rig-out, Crabtree," said the skipper impatiently. "I never saw such a tatterdemalion in all my life."
"Come along, now, Gadget," ordered the chief officer, giving a little tug at the frayed rope, which he had been holding all this while, and, which, in some unaccountable way, seemed to hold the urchin's wardrobe together.
This little tug, however, had dire results, in-so-far as the above mentioned wardrobe was concerned. It immediately became obvious that it not only served as braces to the little gamin, but also as a girdle, which kept in a sort of suspended animation Gadget's circulating library and commissariat. For, even as the janitor and his prisoner turned, the rope became undone, and, though Gadget by a rapid movement retained the nether part of his tattered apparel in position, yet his library--which consisted of a dirty, grease-stained, much worn volume--and his commissariat--composed of sundry fragments of dry crusts of bread wrapped in half a newspaper--immediately became dislodged by the movement, and showered themselves in a dozen fragments at the captain's feet.
"Snakes alive! what have we here?" demanded that august person, as he stooped and picked up the book. Then he laughed outright, as he read aloud from the grubby, much-thumbed title page:--
Five weeks in a Balloon ... by Jules Verne.
The mate grinned too. He remembered how that same book had thrilled him, not so long ago either. And, perhaps, after all, it was the same with Captain Rogers.