10 THE BOY CAPTAIN.

«You said when a man asked you for a true yarn, he
got it, and that’s what I’m after. The first one you
told is all right for the marines; but I want to know how
your craft foundered, and how you happened to be in
that boat?”

Again the man looked at the boy, and appeared as if
trying to induce his face to take on an expression of
‘anger in order to intimidate the over-bold questioner.

Ben gazed at him in the most friendly manner possible,
and never suggested by so much as the tremor of an eye-
lid that there was any reason for the honest old salt to be
disturbed in mind.

The fact that Ben put aside so completely this story
which had been told, as something untrue, caused the
alleged suffering seaman to fancy he might be getting
both himself and his companions into difficulties by draw-
ing so extensively upon his imagination, without reference
to his shipmates’ previous statements, and he would have
terminated the interview then and there, but for the
young sailor.

Ben had no intention of investing fully one-third of
Mr. Short’s plug of tobacco in such an ill-paying specula-
tion, and, as his companion attempted to rise for the
purpose of going forward, he said, in a matter - of -fact
tone:

“When Captain Thompson hears that you men
couldn’t all tell the same story, I’ve got an idea that
things will be pretty warm.”

«What kind of a captain is he?”