“Then perhaps it’s all right for him to have a parrot that only says ‘Pretty Polly.’ One of the other sort would give him away.”
“Did he really fire at you yesterday?” asked Captain John. “We saw the smoke and heard the bang.”
“That wasn’t him; that was us,” said Captain Nancy. “We sailed into the bay and round the houseboat and looked in through the cabin windows. Uncle … Captain Flint was asleep. We saw him. So we took one of those big Roman candles that fizz and then go off with a bang, and we put it on the cabin roof and lit it and sailed away. We were just clearing the point when it banged. We had saved it from last fifth of November, but it hadn’t gone bad at all. It couldn’t have banged better.”
“We heard it here,” said Roger. “It was a good bang.”
“I bet it made him savage,” said Nancy.
“He was standing on deck shaking his fist when we were sailing up to Rio after you,” said John, “and that was long after.”
“Well, we are all at war with him now,” said Nancy. “Some day we’ll capture the houseboat. We could easily do it all together. Swallow on one side and Amazon on the other. He couldn’t be both sides of the deck at once. Then we’ll give him his choice. He must throw in his lot with us like last summer, or else he must walk the plank.”
“It’ll be best for him to walk the plank,” said Able-seaman Titty. “Then we’ll take his treasure and buy a big ship, and live in her forever and ever and sail all over the world.”
“We could go to the China Seas to see daddy,” said Susan.
“We could discover new continents,” said Titty. “America can’t fill everything. There must be lots that haven’t been found yet.”