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 parent before it ever came into the possession of the pirates. It frowned down from the bow of the Greyhound in a manner most menacing, however, and more than one little girl had been known to turn pale when it was held threateningly against her palpitating bodice, backed by a masked and scowling man demanding if she had no more than those three apples in her pocket!

And, on the whole, the cup of happiness of our pirates would have been full to overflowing, but for one thing. And that was the sad fact that the Greyhound was given to leaking so ungallantly. They had nailed up her rents, they had plugged and caulked her cracks with oakum, and had ruined a dozen suits of clothes in painting her with pitch and tar and red lead. But still she leaked. All through her meteoric career in fact, she never knew what it meant to possess a tight bottom. Day and night, when afloat, a man had to be stationed at her pumps (secretly appropriated from the McWilliams's cistern); and many were the miseries and heartburnings this perpetual and irremediable failing gave rise to among her saddened crew.