“Guess I did.”
“And when you got to the entrance they were nowhere in sight, and therefore must have sailed through; they couldn’t have dragged the Spray over the rocks?”
“Suppose not.”
The colonel and the squire were rather enjoying this, and had plucked up spirits enough to titter with the rest at the discomfiture of Captain Sam.
“Then you tried to imitate these young men and go through as they did, but you didn’t seem to know the channel, and so got aground?”
“Channel!” roared Captain Sam, bellowing out the word in a rage and shaking a fist at the squire. “Channel, did you say? Haven’t I told you there wasn’t enough channel there to wash a sheep in? Didn’t I tell these two thick-headed numskulls”—pointing to the colonel and the squire—“that we’d get aground if we went in there? And didn’t they snarl at me like two old women, and accuse me of letting them ’ere boys get away? Didn’t I know we’d get aground in there, and didn’t these two seasick old pussy-cats make me go ahead and do it?”
Captain Sam, beside himself with indignation, roared this out so his voice could be heard far out in the street. In vain the court rapped for order. The whole court-room was convulsed, and, finally, His Honour, overcome with the situation, leaned back in his chair and laughed too.
Only the colonel and the squire, the butt of all the merriment, looked alternately at the floor and the ceiling, and mopped their faces with handkerchiefs as red as their cheeks.
At length, when order was restored, Judge Ellis said: “Captain Sam, you are excused. You are in contempt of court. The case will proceed without testimony from you.”
At which Captain Sam, feeling that he had in a measure vindicated his name and reputation, got down from the stand in a somewhat better frame of mind.