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 followed by a murmur of questioning admiration. Then one by one the entire crew of the Greyhound came over and stood exultingly beside their Captain. No pirate likes to be called a coward. But—well, they were in for it now, anyway.

Old Brown, the engineer of the Lone Star, was eating his frugal lunch from a wicker basket, on the starboard side of his little propeller,—as one might plainly see from the cant of her deck, for the worthy engineer was very fat. He was waiting, somewhat impatiently, for the return of the wheelsman and the tin pail. Then suddenly he thought he heard the creak of oars out in the river near by.

Without so much as rising from his seat, he twisted his head around the back corner of his smoke-stained little cabin.

As he thus exposed himself to the enemy, a flat-headed arrow, most carefully aimed, whistled past his right ear. And he beheld, at the same moment, a sight that almost made his honest blue eyes pop out.

For crawling up to him, right under the shadow of the Lone Star, was a long black