Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/341



HE pirates of Watterson's Creek sat about the deck of the Greyhound, moodily flinging apple-cores into the stream. Their last ounce of mullein-leaf and Indian tobacco had been smoked away. A spirit of unrest had crept over the idle and impatient crew, as they waited the return of Pinkie Ball. That worthy had volunteered to purloin from an unsuspecting mother's sewing-room a whole rattan rocking-chair, which, carefully unwoven and cut up, ought to supply the crew of the Greyhound with smoking-material for at least a week to come.

The pirates had been on an extended and enervating cruise of several hours, up the river, and were now anchored in midstream, as a precautionary measure against sudden attack, just above the shadow of the old railway bridge. A long and wavering line of cores, punctuated here and there by malignantly pale watermelon rinds, drifted slowly down with