Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/365

 before swinging round and taking those eleven forlorn passengers aboard.

"My cookie-pie!" was his solitary though forceful ejaculation, as he packed the lot of them down in his warm little engine-room, where they sat apprehensively, and in melancholy silence, pondering over just what ultimate fate that, day had in store for them. From the Captain himself the old-time hauteur of the pirate had fallen,—for what is there imposing about even the boldest buccaneer, when seen without frill or furbelow!

As the Lone Star swung slowly into Rankin's Dock that night eleven silhouetted heads gazed anxiously out from the ruddy doorway of her engine-room.

Most of the town of Chamboro seemed crowded about the little wharf, dotted with lights, where many of the noisy throng carried lanterns. Men and women, together with small children who ought to have been abed hours before, stood grouped about a dark, low-lying mysterious form that swung in the water just under the nose of the Lone Star.

That mysterious form bore the ponderous official padlocks of the Corporation of