Mr. Topper just pointed with the longest, boniest finger I ever saw, and I thought he was going to cry.

“There,” says he. “Look at that.”

“Fiddlesticks,” says Mr. Browning. “Ninety yachts out of a hundred come in here for anchorage the first night out of New York.”

Mr. Topper grabbed the glasses and stared at the black yacht. “Her name’s Porpoise,” he said.

“See anybody you know?”

Mr. Topper shook his head. “Everybody’s below except a man in dungarees. Part of the crew. Smoke’s coming out of the funnel. Galley stovepipe must come up there. Probably all getting ready for dinner.”

“Then,” said Mr. Browning with a chuckle, “whether they’re friendly or hostile, we won’t have to worry for an hour.” And just then Rameses III poked his head above deck and stood there mumbling.

“Food’s on the table. Gittin’ cold. Work myself to the bone gittin’ hot grub for folks and they never do nothin’ but dally and loiter till it’s colder’n dead fish. Dunno whatever I took up with bein’ a cook fer. Git no thanks. Nothin’ but kicks and dishwashin’. Nothin’ to me whether folks eats hot food or not. Sp’ile their stummicks if they want to. I do my duty, and if they hain’t willin’ to profit by it, why, ’tain’t no skin off’n my neck.”

We filed down and took our seats, and for a while nobody said a word, because we were hungry and the things Rameses III had cooked were mighty good. Then Mr. Browning says, “Got to row up to the village to send a telegram. Better come along, Topper.... Why don’t you boys wait around a while and go for a swim before you turn in?”

“Sounds good,” says Catty.

So, when dinner was over, Mr. Topper and Mr. Browning piled into the dinghy and Naboth went along to run the engine, and Catty and I were left alone on the Albatross with Rameses III and Tom, the engineer. Tom was one of the silent kind. All the time we spent on that boat I never heard him say a word. All he ever did was to shake his head for yes or waggle it for no.

We took the phonograph onto the after deck and started her going and just sat and enjoyed ourselves. We were full of grub and our lungs were full of fine air, and everything was growing still and shadowy so that a fellow didn’t want to do much and was mighty well satisfied just to be there. After a while a ramshackle launch came alongside. It was loaded with vegetables and melons and such, but Rameses III shooed the man off and wouldn’t buy anything. After that things were quiet for a while, and the shadows sort of sprawled out from the high rocks toward us, and you couldn’t see any more what was rock and what was water—and then lights began to twinkle off on the shore, and a fellow started to tune up on a cornet. Our riding lights were lit, and the only way we could tell the black yacht was still there was by the light at her masthead. It looked kind of like a star that had got lost and settled down close to the water. Then a young fellow and a girl came sliding past in a canoe and Catty and I joked with them some.

“Well,” says Catty after a while, “guess my dinner’s settled. Let’s go in for a swim.”

We dropped off our clothes and stood up on the rail and dove in. Wow! I’ve been in some pretty cold water, but that water in the Thimbles was colder than I’d expect to find it at the North Pole. It wasn’t so bad after a minute though, and we swam around enjoying it to beat everything.

“Say,” Catty says after a minute, “let’s swim over and have a look at the pirate.”

“What pirate?” says I.

“Only pirate there is. Here we are, you and I. We’ve been sent in by a frigate that’s chasing pirates to spy out this hiding place. We don’t know anybody’s here, but we’ve got to find out, and go back and guide the cutters in to attack. They always had cutters, didn’t they? And they called it ‘cutting out.’ Well we’re going to cut out this pirate, and burn their stockade and rescue prisoners, and maybe find bales and boxes and heaps of rich merchandise that’ll make us wealthy. Come on.”

“All right,” says I, “but let’s not get lost.”

“Always can see the riding light,” he says. “Swim as still as you can.”

So we started off towards the pirate, swimming so quiet we could hardly hear ourselves. It wasn’t much of a swim, though there was quite a little current. We got to the pirate and all around her. There wasn’t a light except her riding light, and for a while we couldn’t hear a sound. It was just as if she was deserted. But when we got just under her tail we could hear a murmur of voices and Catty reached out and touched my shoulder and whispered, “Grab hold of her stern and listen.”

So we grabbed and lay still on the water. But we couldn’t make out a word for quite a while. Then one of the men got up and stood right over us and says, “Well, so far—so good.”

“Any fool can chase a boat in broad daylight,” says the other man, who came and stood by him.

“But we aren’t sure he’s aboard.”

“I am,” says the other man.

“Wish I was. If we’ve been fooled——”

“Oh, he never suspected a thing. How should he?”

“A man that knows what he knows is suspicious of everybody and everything—if he’s got any sense. And this fellow’s got some sense. We shouldn’t have hung to his heels so close.”

“Rubbish.”

“And, as I said, he may have fooled us. I didn’t see him aboard that yacht.”

“Why don’t you row and pay him a friendly call? Nothing unusual in that. Here we are anchored side by side and nobody would think anything of it if you made a call.”

“He doesn’t know me, but I don’t want him to see me. If he never sees me at all—so much the better.... By jove!”

“What now.”

“I’ve a notion to slip into the water and swim over. Kind of take a look at things.”

“Go it,” says his friend, “if it’ll make you feel any better.”

Catty nudged me.

In a couple of minutes we heard the man say, “Well, here goes,” and then there was a faint splash.

“Everybody’s spying tonight,” Catty whispered. “Let him get a little start and we’ll follow him.”

So we did, and you can bet we swam mighty silently. We had the advantage because we knew he was there, and he didn’t know we were there. Of course we couldn’t see him because it was so dark and we couldn’t hear him, so we just swam straight for our light and kept our eyes peeled.

When we got almost to the Albatross we lay still and floated and listened, but there wasn’t a sound. Then we swam around the yacht keeping so close our hands almost touched her sides, and still we didn’t see or hear our pirate friend. I was just a little ahead when we came under the stern and started up the starboard side toward the jacob’s ladder, which was down. I was just slipping along as still as a fish, and then, all of a sudden, as I reached out to grab the lower step of the ladder, I didn’t grab the step at all, but I did take right hold of a man’s arm.

“Wow!” says he, startled, and he kicked out like he thought a shark was trying to eat him.

“Wow yourself,” says I, and then he twisted his arm away and slipped into the water and began to swim like all git out.

“What’s the hurry, Mister?” says Catty, but he didn’t answer a word.

Catty and I scrambled up the ladder and rubbed down as quick as we could and got into our clothes.

“Well,” says Catty, “I guess we kind of scairt him.”

“He acted so.”

“And he didn’t find out anything, either.”

“Neither did we.”

He looked at me kind of pitying and says, “Oh, we didn’t, eh. How about finding out they really were following us? How about finding out one of them wasn’t sure Topper was aboard? How about making certain they really are some kind of pirates, and don’t mean us any good? Pretty fair night’s work, seems to me.”

“Guess that’s right,” says I, “but now we know it, what do we do?”

“I was wondering,” says he.

“Better tell Mr. Browning,” says I.

“Maybe he won’t like our butting in. He didn’t tell us anything, and it looked like he was trying to keep Mr. Topper quiet so we wouldn’t hear how worried he was. Nobody ever loses any money by keeping his mouth shut.”

“Maybe not,” says I, “but what then?”

“Why,” says he, “we know something’s up and we’re warned. The thing to do is to keep our eyes and ears open until we find out what it’s all about. Guess we better mind our own business, except when we’re alone and can get some fun out of it.”

“All right,” says I, “just as you say.”

It wasn’t more than ten minutes later when the dinghy came back with Mr. Topper and Mr. Browning and Naboth. Mr. Browning asked us if we’d been in for a swim, and we told him we had, and we guessed we’d turn in for the night. I was feeling kind of sleepy and Catty said he was, too. So we went below and opened our berths and rolled in. It felt mighty good. The air was cool and fresh and the yacht swayed just enough in the current to give it a dandy kind of soothing motion, and I’d have been asleep in two minutes if Naboth and Rameses III hadn’t started a rumpus in the galley. They were arguing at the top of their voices.

“I tell you he could do it,” says Naboth. “A whale could swaller a man if he wanted to, and anyhow this here Jonah was a skinny man accordin’ to all the pictures I ever seen of him. Why, you ol’ lunkhead, a feller as skinny as Jonah could go slippin’ and slidin’ down a whale’s gullet as smooth and slick as soft soap. I’ve seen whales.”

“I’ve seen more whales ’n what you have, says Rameses III, and no whale I ever see could swaller anythin’ bigger’n a two months old pickaninny baby like they use for alligator bait in Africy. Naw. A whale might swaller up a man after it had chawed him, but the’ wa’n’t a tooth mark onto Jonah nowheres. Not a tooth mark. My idee is this here Jonah was one of them fellers that always wants to git his friends all het up with a tall story, and that he never even seen a whale.”

“Let’s try and settle this here thing scientific,” says Naboth. “How long’s a whale?”

“Sixty-seventy feet.”

“Good. How long be you?”

“Nigh six feet.”

“Any whale that amounts to anythin’ is ten times as long as you be, hain’t he?”

“Calc’late he is.”

“But a whale runs to mouth and head, don’t he? Whale’s mouth’s more’n ten times as big as your’n?”

“Yes,” says Rameses III, “but I hain’t sure it’s ten times bigger’n your’n.”

“It’s fifty times bigger,” says Naboth.

“Mebby.”

“Why? I ask you why. Tell me that, consarn ye. Tell me why has a whale got a mouth as big as that.”

“To chaw with,” says Rameses III.

“Naw. To fit his stummick. Got to have a big mouth to keep company with his stummick. A feller can stand up and walk around inside a whale’s stummick, can’t he?”

“Hain’t never seen it proved.”

“The size of the mouth proves it. No use havin’ a big mouth ’less you got a big stummick. No use havin’ a big stummick ’less you got a big mouth. And, here’s where the science comes in, by gum! It ’ud be foolish to have a stummick bigger’n a cave and a mouth bigger’n a cellar if the’ wa’n’t some hole connectin’ ’em that was big enough to let sumthin big through it, because the mouth it takes in big things and the stummick has to have big things to fill it, and neither the mouth nor the stummick would be any good if big things couldn’t git from the one to the other. And there you be, and that’s proof. It’s science. It’s how I jest know a whale could ’a’ swallered Jonah if he’d ’a’ wanted to—even a medium sized whale, and the one we’re talkin’ about is a extry big whale.”

“It couldn’t,” says Rameses III, “because it didn’t; and that hain’t science, it’s common sense; and how do I know it? I’ll tell you: because nobody but this here feller Jonah ever claimed to be swallered by a whale, and there’s been tall liars since his day. The’s been men had all sorts of things happen to ’em but never another but jest this here one Jonah feller dared claim a whale swallered him and then spit him up ’cause he didn’t like the taste of him. And this here Jonah wa’n’t no American, either. He was some kind of a furriner, and them furriners is as full of lies as an egg is of meat, and that’s common sense. If this here whale in question was to up and swaller an American, and this here American was to come back and tell it and hold up his hand and cross his heart, why, mebby I’d b’lieve him. But not no Dago, or whatever this Jonah was——”

And then I sort of lost track of things, and the next I knew it was morning and Mr. Browning was shaking me to get up.