Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/345

 The only reply to this was an apple-core that stirred the turkey-feather stuck bristlingly in Pud's pirate hat.

As the Captain strode perplexedly back and forth across his deck a familiar sound smote on his ears. He clambered up on his cabin roof, and peered down into the shimmering river-distance, with a face illumined.

It was the Lone Star, Chamboro's one permanent steamer, coughing and churning and wheezing upstream, with a small raft of logs at her heels.

And at the sight of her every member of that crew understood just what his Captain's thoughts had been! The Greyhound had found an enemy worthy of her mettle.

There was something intoxicating in the thought of ever taking a prize so ponderous. Yet every man on the Greyhound knew there was no other craft propelled by steam in those waters,—with the exception, of course, of the great excursion steamer that came up the river twice every week. But the excursion steamer, for the time being, at any rate, was out of the question.

"Golly, Lonely!" said Pud Jones,