"Simple enough! simple enough!" returned the old Captain, pulling away on his pipe. "I was et up once, therefore why not ye, says I," he added.
"Eaten up? You?" cried Tom. "How could that be? You are here, aren't you?"
"Yes, I be," returned the Captain. "But so also are you in spite of the fact that ar town paper says that two cannabiles has et up the poppylation of New York. If it's a-comin' to manufacture apologizing, it's your turn first."
"Well," said Tom, "we don't want to make you mad, Captain Jack. If two cannibals ate up the population of New York, we escaped. Maybe we were in the back of the pantry, where they couldn't find us," he added, with a sly wink at Bobbie.
"That's where I was," said Bobbie, resolved to be on good terms with the Captain anyhow. "I heard our next-door neighbors hollering away like everything, so I and my whole family hid away behind the ice-box."
"Exactly," said Captain Jack, with a smile. "You was sensible, you was; an' so you escaped being et, but I never had no such luck. Cannabiles got hold of me oncet, an' if it hadn't been for my presence o' mind I wouldn't ha' been here now."
"Why, what did they do?" asked Tom.
"They et every bit o' me except my head," said Jack. "First they et my feet, then my legs, then my arms, an' then the rest o' me, except my head"—and Captain Jack sighed as he thought of it. "An' I tell ye, boys," he added, with a sad shake of his head, "it hurt awful, 'specially when they were pickin' my bones."
"But you're here now!" cried Bob.
"Yes," said Captain Jack; "but from my collar down I'm false. I've one wooden leg, one cork leg—which keeps me up when I go in swimmin'—one wax arm, and another arm which I've growed since the cataract."