The Corner House Girls Growing Up Part 16

"Oh, Sammy!" cried Dot, in amazement. "Are they pirates, just the same as we are pirates?"

"They must be," frankly admitted Sammy. "Else they wouldn't have come along and stolen this ca.n.a.lboat."

"Oo-ee!" gasped the little girl. "And do pirates _steal_?"

"Huh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the boy in vast disgust. "What did you suppose they was pirates for? Of course they steal! And they murder folks, and loot towns, and then bury their money and kill folks so's their ghosts will hang around the buryin' place and watch the treasure."

Horror stricken at the details of such a wicked state of things, Dot could not for the moment reply. They heard faintly a shrill voice--evidently of the "Lowise" formerly addressed by the ca.n.a.lboatman.

"Look out, Pap! Low bridge! Goin' to stop at Purdy's to git that mess of 'taters he said he'd have ready for us?"

There was a grumbling reply from the man.

"Dunno. It's rainin' so hard. Might's well keep right on to Durginville, I reckon, Lowise."

"Durginville!" murmured Sammy. "My! that's a long way off, Dot!"

"And are you going to let 'em carry us off this way?" demanded the little girl in growing alarm and disgust. "Why, I thought you were a pirate!"

If pirates were such dreadful people as Sammy had just intimated, she wanted to see him exercise some of that savagery in this important matter. Dot Kenway had not considered being kidnapped and carried away from Milton when she set forth to be a pirate's mate. She expected him to defend her from disaster.

Sammy saw the point. It was "up to him," and he was too much of a man to shirk the issue. After all, he realized that, although actually led away from home by this determined little girl, he was the one who had fully understood the enormity of what they were doing. In his own unuttered but emphatic phrase, "She was only a kid."

"All right, Dot," he declared with an a.s.sumption of confidence that he certainly did not feel. "I'll see about our getting out of this right away. Of course we won't want to go to Durginville. And it's stopping raining now, anyway, I guess."

The sound of the thunder was rolling away into the distance. But other sounds, too, seemed to have retreated as Sammy climbed the ladder to reach the hatch-cover. The hatchway was all of six feet square. The heavy plank cover that fitted tightly over it, was a weight far too great for a ten year old boy to lift.

Sammy very soon made this discovery. Dot, scarcely able to see him from below, the hold was so dark, made out that he was balked by something.

"Can't you budge it, Sammy?" she asked anxiously.

"I--I guess it's locked," he puffed.

"Oo-ee!" she gasped. "Holler, Sammy! Holler!"

Sammy "hollered." He was getting worried himself now. It was bad enough to contemplate facing a man who might not be fond of pirates--even small ones. But if they could not get out of the hold of the ca.n.a.lboat, they would not be able to face the man or anybody else.

The thought struck terror to the very soul of Sammy. Had he been alone he certainly would have done a little of that "blubbering" that he had just now accused Dot of doing. But "with a girl looking on a fellow couldn't really give way to unmanly tears."

He began to pound on the hatch with his fists and yell at the top of his voice:

"Lemme out! Lemme out!"

"Oh, Sammy," came the aggrieved voice of Dot from below. "Ask 'em to let us both out. I don't want to be left here alone."

"Aw, who's leavin' you here alone?" growled the boy.

In fact, there seemed little likelihood of either of them getting out.

There was not a sound from outside, save a faint shout now and then of the shrill-voiced girl driving the mules.

The man had gone aft and was smoking his pipe as he sat easily on the broad tiller-arm. Sammy and Dot had descended into the ca.n.a.lboat hold by the forward hatchway and only the hollow echoes of their voices drummed through the hold of the old barge, disturbing the man not at all, while the girl was too far ahead on the towpath, spattering through the mud at the mules' heels, to notice anything so weak as the cries of the youthful stowaways.

Exhausted, and with scratched fists, Sammy tumbled down the ladder again. There was just enough light around the hatch to make the gloom where the boy and girl stood a sort of murky brown instead of the oppressive blackness of the hold all about them.

Dot shuddered as she tried to pierce the surrounding darkness. There might be most anything in that hold--creeping, crawling, biting things!

She was beginning to lose her confidence in Sammy's ability, pirate or no pirate, to get them out of this difficult place.

"Oh, Sammy!" she gulped. "I--I guess I don't want to be pirates any longer. I--I want to go home."

"Aw, hush, Dot! Crying won't help," growled the boy.

"But--but we can't stay here all night!" she wailed. "It's lots wusser'n it was when Tess and I was losted and we slept out under a tree till morning, and that old owl hollered 'Who? Who-o?' all night--only I went to sleep and didn't hear him. But I couldn't sleep here."

"Aw, there ain't no owl here," said Sammy, with some dim idea of comforting his comrade.

"But mebbe there's--there's rats!" whispered the little girl, voicing the fear that had already clutched at her very soul.

"Wow!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sammy. But his scornful tone failed to ring true.

There really might be rats in this old hulk of a barge. Were not rats supposed to infest the holds of all ships? Afloat with a cargo of rats in the hold of a ship on the tossing ca.n.a.l was nothing to laugh at.

"I--I believe there are rats here," sobbed Dot again. "And--and we can't get out. If--if they come and--and nibble me, Sammy Pinkney, I'll ne-never forgive you for taking me away off to be pirates."

"Oh, goodness, Dot Kenway! Who wanted you to come! I'm sure I didn't. I knew girls couldn't be pirates."

"I'm just as good a one as you are--so now!" she snapped, recovering herself somewhat.

Sammy found something just then in his pocket that he thought might aid matters. It was a bag of "gumb.a.l.l.s."

"Oh, say, Dot! have a ball?" he asked thrusting out the bag in the dark.

"Oh, Sammy! Thanks!" She found one of the confections and immediately had such a sticky and difficult mouthful that it was impossible for her either to cry or talk for some time. This certainly was a relief to Sammy!

He could give his mind now to thinking. And no small boy ever had a more difficult problem to solve. Two youngsters in the hold of this huge old, empty ca.n.a.lboat, the deck planks of which seemed so thick that n.o.body outside could hear their cries, and unable to lift the cover. Query: How to obtain their release?

Sammy had read stories of stowaways who had wonderful adventures in the holds of ships. But he did not just fancy climbing around in this black hold, or exploring it in any way far from the hatch-well. There might be rats here, just as Dot suggested.

Of course, they were in no immediate danger of starvation. His two dollars so lavishly spent drove the ghost of hunger far, far away. But, to tell the truth, just at this time Sammy Pinkney did not feel as though he would ever care much about eating.

Even the gumb.a.l.l.s did not taste so delicious as he had expected. Anxiety rode him hard--and the harder because he felt, after all, that the responsibility of Dot Kenway's being here rested upon his shoulders. She would never have thought of running away to be pirates all by herself.

That was a fact that could not be gainsaid.

Meanwhile the ca.n.a.lboat was being drawn farther and farther away from Milton. Sammy did not wish to go with it, any more than Dot did. The situation was "up to him" indeed--the boy felt it keenly; but he had no idea as to what he should do to escape from this unfortunate imprisonment.

CHAPTER XII

MISSING