“You shall not do it!” she cried, and she was so earnest and excited that she stamped her little foot upon the deck. “It is wicked and cruel.”
“Why, it ain’t nothin’ but an old shark, Missee,” growled Tom Thornton. “He ain’t fit for nothing better.”
“He’s God’s creature. God made him,” declared the child. “You’ve no right to maltreat him. It’s wicked. I won’t have it.”
She was so excited I was afraid she would get sick. I put in my oar:
“That’s all right, Philly. None of us stopped to think of that side of it. Lower away here, boys, and we’ll knock that prop out of his mouth again.”
“No you won’t!” exclaimed Bob Promise.
I stopped and looked at him. “Why, sure, Bob, you don’t mind. If the little girl doesn’t want us to do it——”
“Stow that,” said Bob, in his very ugliest tone. “That shark ain’t hers. I put that stick there. I want to see the man that’ll pull it out,” and he swelled up like a turkey-cock and acted as though he thought he was the biggest man who ever stepped on the Gullwing’s deck.
But if he had been twice as big I reckon I should have stepped up to him! To have anybody speak before Phillis as he did was not to be endured. Thankful Polk flamed up, too, until you could have touched off a match on his face. Old Tom Thornton reached an arm across and put me back as lightly as though I had been a feather, and seized the rope above Bob’s hand.
“Drop it, you landcrab!” he growled. Old Tom seldom got angry; when he did we knew enough to stand from under!