“tom did not try to make his escape.”—P. [119].
“Sounded like a cat mewing,” remarked the unfeeling Jim. “Listen.” Again they heard it and a faint pounding inside the sea-chest.
“He’s in that chest,” cried Jim, and he tried to open it.
“Locked in,” said Juarez. “Let Pete open it.”
Pete came forward, after fishing a key out of the depths of his pocket.
“Lucky I could find it,” he said. Then he flung the top of the chest back. Tom did not try to make his escape, or put up a fight of any kind, for he was all in, and was only too glad to be captured, for, as he figured, and quite correctly, that even the captain could not put him in a worse place than he had put himself.
“You look more like a ghost than the other one,” said Jim with a grin.
After he was sufficiently revived, he, too, was locked up, and further proceedings were put off until the morrow. In the meantime it was decided to have a little fun with these practical jokers on the next day, so as to teach them the seriousness of life on the ocean wave.
So at ten the next morning a court-martial was held in the dining saloon. As the weather still remained dark and overcast, it was necessary to have the big lamp over the table lit. The judges were the captain, who sat at one end of the table, and Juarez, who was at his left, and Jim, at the right. For once the captain took off his old cap and showed a bald, pink dome, with tufted gray at the side. His face wore a grimness that betokened hanging for the culprits—nothing less. The court was ready.