hey could
swallow you and your canoe."

"Well," the sailor said with a sigh, "I won't say no more about the
allygaters. I can't rightly recall when they came into the story.
Howsomdever, I landed, you can believe that, you know."

"Oh yes, we can quite believe, Jack, that, if you were there, in that
canoe, in that back water, with the land close ahead, you did land."

The sailor looked searchingly at Ruthven and then continued:

"I hauled the canoe up and hid it in some bushes, and it were well I
did, for a short time afterwards a great--" and he paused. "Does the
hippypotybus live in them ere waters, young gents?"

"He does not, Jack," Ruthven said.

"Then it's clear," the sailor said, "that it wasn't a hippypotybus. It
must have been a seal."

"Yes, it might have been a seal," Ruthven said. "What did he do?"

"Well he just took a look at me, gents, winked with one eye, as much as
to say, 'I see you,' and went down again. There warn't nothing else as
he could do, was there?"

"It was the best thing he could do anyhow," Ruthven said.

"Well, gents, I lived there for about three weeks, and then a ship
comes along, homeward bound, and I goes out and hails her. At first they
thought as I was a native as had learned to speak English, and it wasn't
till they'd boiled me for three hours in the ship's copper as they got
at the color of my skin, and could believe as I was English. So I came
back here and found the old woman still alive, and took to fishing
again; but it was weeks and weeks before I could get her or any one else
to believe as I was Jack Perkins. And that's all the story, young gents.
Generally I tells it a sight longer to the gents as come down from
London in summer; but, you see, I can't make much out of it when ye
won't let me have 'bellishments."

"And how much of it is true altogether, Jack?" Frank asked. "Really how
much?"

"It's all true as I have told you, young masters," the boatman said. "It
were every bit true about the running down of the smack, and me being
nearly killed by the skipper, and the mutiny, and the burning of the
vessel, and my living for a long time--no, I won't stick to the two
years, but it might have been three weeks, with the natives before a
ship picked me up. And that's good enough for a yarn, ain't it?"

"Quite good enough, Jack, and we're much obliged to you; but I should
advise you to drop the embellishments in future."

"It ain't no use, Master Hargate, they wi