necktie wrapped around his head, but several locks of hair had
escaped from under it. He always manages to have something not quite
right about his costumes. He has very nice hair--curly, and quite
amberish colored--but it's not at all like a pirate's. I poked him
from behind to make him hurry, for Jerry was pointing at a big
schooner that was coming down the harbor. We all lay down flat
behind the rock until she had gone slowly around the point. We could
see the sun winking on something that might have been a cannon in
her waist--that's the place where cannon always are--and of course
the captain must have been keeping a sharp lookout landward with his
spy-glass.

"Eh, mon," said Jerry, when the schooner had passed, "but yon was a
verra close thing!"

That's one of the worst things about Jerry,--the way he mixes up
language. We'd been reading "Kidnapped," and I suppose he forgot he
wasn't _Alan_.

"Silence, dog!" I said, to remind him of who we were. "Very like
she's but hove to in the offing, and for aught you know she's maybe
sending ashore the jolly-boat by now."

"Then let's go to the end of the point and have a look," Greg
suggested.

He doesn't often make speeches, because Jerry is apt to pounce on
him and tell him he's "too plain American," but I think it isn't
fair, because he hasn't read as many books as Jerry and I. So I
hurried up and said: