'It done it though - that's all
I know about it.'
'Say - what did they do with the bar'l?' says the Child of Calamity.
'Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.'
'Edward, did the child look like it was choked?' says one.
'Did it have its hair parted?' says another.
'What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?' says a fellow they called
Bill.
'Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?' says Jimmy.
'Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning.'
says Davy.
'Him? O, no, he was both of 'em,' says Bob. Then they all haw-hawed.
'Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill? You look bad -
don't you feel pale?' says the Child of Calamity.
'O, come, now, Eddy,' says Jimmy, 'show up; you must a kept part of that
bar'l to prove the thing by. Show us the bunghole - do - and we'll all
believe you.'
'Say, boys,' says Bill, 'less divide it up. Thar's thirteen of us. I
can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.'
Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped
out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself, and they
yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear
them a mile.
'Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that,' says the Child of Calamity;
and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles
where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked; so
he says 'Ouch!' and jumped back.
'Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys - there's a snake here as
big as a cow!'
So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.
'Come out of that, you beggar!' says one.
'Who are you?' says another.
'What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.
'Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.'
I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me
over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says -
'A cussed thief! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!'
'No,' says Big Bob, 'less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky blue
all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!'
'Good, that 's it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.'
When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin,
the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that
sort of worked on Davy, and he says -
''Vast there! He 's nothing but a cub.
