The stove-pipe was a great deal more shipshape.
The town was not so easily appeased.

The selectmen determined to make an example of the guilty parties, and offered a reward for their arrest, holding out a promise of pardon to anyone of the offenders who would furnish information against the rest.

But there were no faint hearts among the Centipedes.

Suspicion rested for a while on several persons--on the soldiers at the fort; on a crazy fellow, known about town as "Bottle-Nose"; and at last on Sailor Ben.
"Shiver my timbers!" cries that deeply injured individual.

"Do you suppose, sir, as I have lived to sixty year, an' ain't got no more sense than to go for to blaze away at my own upper riggin'?
It doesn't stand to reason." It certainly did not seem probable that Mr.Watson would maliciously knock over his own chimney, and Lawyer Hackett, who had the case in hand, 'bowed himself out of the Admiral's cabin convinced that the right man had not been discovered.
People living by the sea are always more or less superstitious.