Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/329

 "An' there 's old Cap'n Sands!" cried Pinkie Ball, with openly disturbed countenance.

"Say, Lonely, don't you think they 're after us?" asked one of the crew, irreverently, of his Captain.

"Order, there, men!" thundered the Captain; still looking out of the tail of his eye, however, at the approaching green boat.

"I say we sneak for Rankin's Woods," suggested Redney McWilliams.

The Captain pulled his hat lower over his brow, and looked at his men with unspeakable scorn. A fine idea had come to him.

"If this ship is goin' to be taken, there 's only one thing to do! She 's got to be scuttled, and sent to the bottom!"

It sounded so grandiloquently fine that for a moment or two it smothered all criticism.

"Aw, what 's the use o' talkin' that way. Lonely? Did n't we have to pay three dollars for her—and sweat precious hard for it, too—and have n't we been workin' hard enough riggin' her up, ever since?"

It was Piggie Brennan who lodged this sincere but unofficial complaint.