for the second time. "They're as
crazy as flounders, every last one of 'em. An' I've got' em on my hands
for two hull weeks."

"We're ready for duty, sir," announced Will at the conclusion of the
song and dance, with another scrape and a pull at his forelock. "You'll
find us brave and able seamen, and if you'll only issue your orders
we'll gladly obey them."

"Oh, ye will, will ye? Waal, then you can break out the chain-cable and
polish it till it shines, clean the barnacles off'n the ship's bottom,
keep a lookout aloft for the _Flying Dutchman_, and another over the
bows for mermaids, practise all hands at boxing the compass backwards,
get eight bells from the sun, and keep out of my sight till we're away
for fear I'll murder some of ye."

"Ay, ay, most gallant skipper," answered Will, with a grin; and then,
hitching their trousers as they went, the whole boisterous crowd tumbled
down below to examine the interior of the strange home they expected to
occupy for the next two weeks.

As soon as they had disappeared, Captain Crotty and Jabez his son,
commonly called "young Jabe," a lad of seventeen, who represented the
sloop's crew, cast off the mooring-lines, and got their clumsy craft
under way.

The Rangers were delighted with the accommodations prepared for them in
the hold, which was fitted up with temporary bunks for their use. Each
boy made a rush for the bunk that seemed to him most desirable, and
scrambled into it to test its comfort as well as to make good his claim
by possession.

"But I thought sailors always slept in hammocks," remarked Mif Bowers,
in a disappointed tone.

"Oh, pshaw!" replied Abe Cruger. "They're no good, for I tried it at
home and nearly broke my neck tumbling out the minute I got to sleep. I
expect hammock is only a sailor's name for bed, for no one could really
sleep in one; and then, you know, they always call things different at
sea. But I say, Will, isn't old Crotty a daisy? And didn't he seem
surprised to find us looking so much like regular sailors! What did he
mean, though, by the things he told us to do?"

"I don't exactly understand myself," replied the Ranger Captain. "I
suppose, though, we've got to try and do them, because it'll be mutiny
if we don't."

"And in a mutiny everybody gets hung, don't they?" asked Cracker Bob
Jones.

"He said he'd murder us, anyhow, if we didn't keep out of his sight
until he got away, though I don't see how we're going to do it," chi