Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/370

 But most of the older heads of Chamboro did not take the old Cap'n's view of the case. For more than one parent sternly and promptly boarded the Lone Star, and finding a son in that altogether too tempting state of preparedness, spanked him vigorously, soundly, and publicly.

Yet the cruelest blow fell on Captain Lonely O'Malley himself. That worthy buccaneer, emerging from the engine-room, was kicked at inadequately by an inebriate father, only to escape into the arms of a tearful young mother, who seized him bodily and held him to her breast. In vain Lonely struggled and remonstrated; in vain he wriggled and twisted, hot and tingling with the disgrace of such an exhibition. Still that young mother held him and wept over him, wept over him, indeed, as though he had been an infant in arms!

And from Rankin's Dock that night eleven bold pirates went home through the noisy streets of Chamboro; some with aching hearts, all with aching legs. With the passing of those little aches, for eleven redoubtable youths the romance passed out of piracy. From that time