“Everything that Uncle Frank says is right,” declared Don loyally. “But tell me now, Brick, just how you managed to get on board and stow yourself away. Here I was, sore as a pup because you didn’t come down to see me off, and you’ve been right on the ship with us all the time.”
“I came down to the ship the night before she sailed,” explained Teddy. “It was dark, and I slipped on board when no one was looking and hid away in one of the lifeboats. I didn’t mean then—anyway, I didn’t more than half mean—to be a stowaway. I told myself that I’d see you and your uncles when you came on in the morning and beg them to take me with them. I knew I wouldn’t have to beg you,” he added, with a grin.
“You bet you wouldn’t,” laughed Don. “I couldn’t have said yes quick enough.”
“But while I was hiding in the lifeboat I had plenty of time for thinking,” went on Teddy; “and the more I thought, the surer I got that your uncles wouldn’t do it without my father’s knowledge.”
“You were dead right there!”
“But I was crazy to go,” resumed Teddy, “and I decided that the only way I could go was to stow myself away so that I couldn’t be found until after the vessel sailed. The lifeboat didn’t seem safe enough, for all that any one walking around would have to do would be to lift the tarpaulin covering and spy me.
“So I waited till after midnight and watched my chance and slipped down one of the open hatchways into the hold. There were hundreds of bales and barrels there, and it was easy to find a place where nobody would have a chance of finding me.”
“Why didn’t you come out sooner?” asked Don, in wonderment. “This is the third day that we’ve been sailing.”
“Couldn’t,” was the reply. “I found it was easier to get in than it was to get out. I’d have come out after the first day if I could. But it was only this afternoon that a sailor came down in the hold for something, and I yelled to him. You ought to have heard the howl he let out. Guess he thought it was a ghost at first. Then he came for me. Oh, I got out on deck quick enough then—pulled up by the scruff of my neck.”
“Were you hurt?” asked Don quickly.