It must be confessed – and not to the belittlement of Sammy Pinkney – that he never would have run away to be a pirate on this occasion had it not been for Dot Kenway. When this little miss had once set her mind to a thing it took a good deal to turn her from her purpose.

It had been Sammy's dire threat for a long time that he would seek the adventurous life of a buccaneer on the rolling main. But he had never set a definite date for his departure upon this venture. To-day was the day. Fate willed it thus. And it looked as though fate was disguised in the character of a strong-minded little girl with two cherry-red hair-ribbons and a doll hugged tightly in her arms.

Sammy, however, having once embarked on the venture considered that he must take a certain lead in affairs. Dot certainly had urged him away from home and mother; but now she gave up the guidance of affairs entirely into her companion's hands.

She had no more idea of what "being pirates" meant than she had of the location where "pirating" as a profession might be safely pursued. On Sammy's part, he knew that pirates roved the sea. The nearest water to the corner of Willow and Main Streets was the canal. Therefore he led the little girl by the hand toward that rather placid body of water that flowed through one end of Milton and into the river.

The canal connected two tributaries of a large watercourse – the largest in the state, in fact; but it was not a very busy waterway. Now and then a battered old barge was drawn through by a pair of equally battered horses or mules. Milton people held the canal folk in some contempt. But then, they knew very little about the followers of the inland waterways as a class.

Sometimes some of the canal boatmen came over as far as Meadow Street to purchase provisions of Mrs. Kranz, or of Joe Maroni, both of whom occupied stores on property belonging now to the four Corner House girls; and the way the two small runaways took on this day led them directly past this Meadow Street property.

"If we are going to be pirates," said Sammy rather soberly for him, "we must lay in a stock of provisions. We've got to eat, you know."

"Oh! have we?" asked the little girl, to whom the fact of piracy was a sublimated sort of existence in which she had not considered it would be necessary to think of mundane things.

"I've got the money, and we'll lay in a stock," Sammy said, proud of his position now as acknowledged leader of the expedition.

Mrs. Kranz, the German woman who kept the delicatessen store, was not at all surprised to see Dot. The Corner House girls often visited her and the other tenants on the property, and Dot was particularly beloved by the good woman.

"My! my! Undt de baby, too? Coom right in undt haf some nice pop-sarsaparilla. I haf some on de ice yet – you undt your young man."

"Oh, Mrs. Kranz!" cried Dot, eagerly, "we haven't come to visit you. We've come to buy something."

But Sammy nudged her quickly. "Let's have the sarsaparilla," he whispered in Dot's ear, as the generous woman bustled away to the icebox. "That'll go fine."

Maria Maroni, oldest of the fruit dealer's family, who dwelt in the cellar of the building but lived mostly with Mrs. Kranz, waited upon Sammy; so the storekeeper herself had no idea of the queer order Sammy gave.

He bought crackers – mostly of the animal kind; a piece of cheese; fishhooks; a ball of twine; a sack of potatoes (Maria ran and got those from her father); a pencil and a pad of paper; some raisins; a jar of peanut butter; some drop-cakes; and ten cents' worth of a confection just then very popular, called by the children "gumballs."

All these things, save the gumballs, he had put in a flour sack, and told Dot they were ready to depart.

"Undt dat iss a pig pundle of t'ings Mrs. MacCall sent you for," said Mrs. Kranz placidly, as the runaways started out of the store.

"Oh, Mrs. MacCall didn't send us," Dot explained.

"No? Are dey for de poy's mutter!"

"Oh, no. You see, Mrs. Kranz," Dot said gravely, "we're going to be pirates, and we have to have a stock of things to eat. Don't we, Sammy?"

"Come along," growled Sammy, fearful that they would be laughed at.

But Mrs. Kranz was befogged. She had never before heard of pirates, and she did not know whether it was a game, a lodge one belonged to, or a picnic. She guessed it was the last, however, for she bade them a hearty farewell and hoped they would have a pleasant day.

As they came out there was Joe Maroni himself, the neat, smiling, brown little Italian in his corduroy suit and with gold rings in his ears, ready waiting with a basket piled high with fruit.

"For the leetle padrona," Joe said, with a smiling bow, sending his usual gift to Ruth, whom he considered a grand signora and, as his "landlady," deserving of such thoughtful attentions.

"Aw, say!" cried Sammy his eyes growing big; "that's scrumptious."

"But they are for Ruthie," complained Dot. "We'll have to lug them all around with us – and no knowing when we'll get home from being pirates."

"Get home!" snorted the boy. "Why, we can't never go home again. If they catch us they'll hang us in chains."

Dot's mouth became suddenly a round "O" and nothing more, while her eyes Neale O'Neil would have said had he seen them, "bulged out." The assurance in Sammy's tone seemed final. She could not go home again! And "hanging in chains" somehow had an awfully creepy sound.

But as the boy himself did not seem to take these terrible possibilities very seriously, Dot took comfort from that fact and went on again cheerfully. Nor did she mind carrying the basket of attractive fruit. One of the peaches on top was a little mellow and she stuck a tentative finger into the most luscious spot she could see upon the cheek of that particular peach.

The juice was just as sweet! She touched it with her finger again and then put the finger to her lips.

By this time they had come out of Meadow Street and were crossing the open common toward the canal. On one hand was a blacksmith shop, and the smith was getting ready to shoe a pair of mules which, with drooping ears and saddened aspect, waited in the shade.

There was no moving boat on the canal and nothing stirring along the towpath. But a battered looking old barge was moored to the nigh bank, and Sammy's face brightened.

"Come on, Dot," he said, glancing back at the little girl. "There's a ship and I guess there isn't anybody aboard. Anyhow, if there is, we'll fight our way over the bulwarks, kill half the crew, and make the others walk the plank. That is what pirates would do."

"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot – and she dropped the basket of fruit.

"Aw, say!" growled Sammy. "What kind of a pirate will you make? Of course we have to do what all pirates do."

But it was not anything to do with the true business of pirating that had brought forth that squeal from Dot Kenway. Just as she had been about to touch that peach again with her pink finger, where the sweet juice was oozing out, a great ugly, yellow wasp came along and lit right on that juicy spot!

"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot again. Sammy valiantly came to the rescue, and beat away the "stinger" with his cap. But he carried the fruit himself, as well as the bag of other provisions, the rest of the way to the canalboat.

"Can't trust you with it, Dot," he declared. "You'd have the things all mush if you dropped them every time you saw a bee."

"I don't like bees," declared his little comrade.

"And you was one yourself, once," grinned Sammy. "In that show, you know."

"Oh, but I didn't sting anybody," the little girl replied. "I wouldn't be so mean!"

"How do you know this fellow was going to sting you?" demanded Sammy.

"Why, Sammy Pinkney! Of course he was!" declared Dot, earnestly. "I – I could see it right in his face! He was so ugly."

The canalboat was high out of the water, for its hold was empty; but the runaways climbed aboard easily. Sammy was as brave as a lion. He proposed to take possession of the craft and drive ashore anybody who might already be there. Only, there was nobody aboard.

"The crew maybe saw us coming and deserted her," he said to Dot. "Lots of 'em do. When they see the Black Roger flying at our peak – "

"What's the Black Roger?" demanded Dot, big-eyed again. She was gaining considerable information regarding pirates and "pirating."

"Our flag. And when the crews of the merchant ships see it, they tremble," went on Sammy.

"But we haven't got any flag," said the rather literal Dot. "You know we haven't, Sammy."

"Well," he returned cheerfully, "we'll have to make one. I made one once. I got one of my father's handkerchiefs, and blacked it with ma's liquid shoeblacking, all but white spots in the center for a skull and crossbones. But – but," he admitted, "ma took it away from me."

"Never mind," said Dot, kindly. "I've got a handkerchief," and she pulled forth from her pocket a diminutive bit of cambric. "You get some shoeblacking and we'll make another."

Sammy was for getting settled at once, and he went to the door of the decked over cabin intending to put their possessions inside. But the door was made fast with a big padlock.

However, a hatch cover was off one of the hatchways, and the sunshine shone down into the hold of the canalboat. It seemed dry and comfortable just under this opening and there was a rough ladder which gave access to the hold. Sammy went down first; then Dot delivered the package of groceries into his arms, then the basket of fruit, and lastly backed over the edge herself in a most gingerly way, and was helped down gallantly by the pirate chief.

"Now what'll we do, Sammy?" asked the little girl eagerly.

"We'll unpack our things first," said Sammy. "Then I'll rig up a fish-line. We'll have to catch fish to help out with the rest of the grub," added the practical youngster.

"But not with worms!" cried Dot, with a shudder. "If you bring any of those horrid, squirmy worms aboard this boat, I – I'll just go right home and not be pirates any more."

"Oh! All right," said the scornful Sammy, who found "female pirates" rather more trying than he had supposed. "I'll fish with grasshoppers."

"We-ell," agreed Dot. "Only don't let 'em jump on me. For if they do I'll scream – I know I shall, Sammy."

"Pooh! Pirates don't scream," growled the boy.

"Not – not even girl pirates?"

"No," said the boy doggedly. "'Taint the thing to do. We got to be real savage and – "

"Oh, but, Sammy!" gasped the little girl, "I couldn't be savage to a grasshopper."

However, they unpacked their provisions and arranged them on a board. Dot really could not keep her finger off that mellow peach.

"I don't believe Ruthie would mind," she said at last. "And, anyway, it's getting so juicy that maybe it wouldn't be good by the time we got home – "

"Don't I tell you we ain't going home no more!" demanded Sammy.

"Er – well, then I guess we'd better eat the peach to save it," said the little girl, with some hesitancy. "You cut it in half, Sammy," she added with more decision.

Inroads were made upon most of the other provisions within the first hour. For, indeed, what else is there more interesting in being pirates than using up the food laid in for a voyage? Sammy had spent his two dollars with the cheerfulness and judgment of a sailor ashore with his pay in his pocket. And he did not propose to let any greedy little girl eat her share and his own of their stock.

Several times Sammy ran up the ladder to examine the vicinity of the Nancy Hanks, as the battered old canalboat was named – its title being painted in big letters along either side of the decked-over cabin, which was a little higher than the remainder of the deck – but the pirate chief sighted no prey on the canal. The waters of that raging main seemed deserted of all craft whatsoever.

Suddenly, however, he sighted an approaching group. It came from the direction of the blacksmith shop. The mules they had seen waiting to be shod ambled ahead at a pace warranted to bring them to the towpath in time. Behind, at the same gait, came a tall, shambling man, what appeared to be a girl some twelve years of age in tattered calico, and shoeless, and a droop-eared, forlorn, yellow hound.

"Hist!" said Sammy, down the well of the hold.

Dot did not know just what to reply to this thrilling summons, but she ventured to ask:

"Do you want to say something to me, Sammy Pinkney? For if you do, you can."

"Hist! Keep quiet," ordered the pirate chief. "They're – they're in the offing."

"Wha – what's a offling?" she demanded. "We're orphans – Ruthie, and Aggie, and Tess, and me. So's Mr. Luke and Cecile. And so's Neale O'Neil," she added thoughtfully. "Is an offling like an orphan?"

"Keep still!" hissed the boy. "They're nearer."

"Who's nearer?"

"Shall I make 'em heave to when they come near 'nough, or shall we let 'em go on and give chase?"

"Goodness me, Sammy!" cried Dot, greatly puzzled. "You'd better come right down here. If anybody's coming we don't want to get into trouble. You know we didn't ask the man if we could come into this boat, and perhaps he don't like pirates."

This idea appealed to Sammy, too, as the mules and the little company with them drew near. He slipped over the edge of the hatchway and came down the ladder.

Overhead a threatening black cloud had obscured the sun. Thunder muttered in the distance. A tempest would probably break soon and neither Sammy nor Dot liked thunder and lightning.

"And we didn't bring any umbrella, Sammy Pinkney!" gasped Dot.

"Aw, we won't need one down here. We'll be dry enough," the boy declared.

Just then a drawling voice said: "Lowise, you better pull over that hatch right smart. It's agoin' to pour cats and dogs in a minute."

"You get the mewels hitched on, Pap," said a shriller and younger voice. "Where's the key to the house? Give it here. And you, Beauty, come aboard. Ain't no rabbits fur you to chase so near town as this."

"Oh," whispered the little girl below in the hold, "they have come on to our boat!"

"Hist!" said Sammy, shakingly.

"Do – do people do that to pirates?" demanded Dot, anxiously. "I – I thought we were going to – to get on to other people's boats and make them walk over a board."

"Walk the plank!" hissed Sammy.

"And aren't we?"

"Wait!" commanded the pirate chief in a most threatening tone.

They waited. By and by somebody came along and kicked the hatch-cover into place and the light was suddenly shut out of the hold. At the same time big drops of rain began drumming on the deck and the thunder burst forth in a rolling reverberation overhead.

"I guess we will wait, Sammy Pinkney!" gasped Dot, nervously. "They've shut us up down here!"

CHAPTER XI
AFLOAT ON THE CANAL

Dot Kenway might have been much more frightened, shut into the canalboat hold in the dark, had it not been for two things. She was more afraid of the thunderstorm raging overhead than she was of the dark. Secondly, she had Sammy Pinkney with her.

That savage pirate might shake with nervousness, but he certainly could not be afraid!

"Don't you mind, Dottie," he said to her. "They don't know we're here yet."

"And if they do find out?" she asked.

"Why, if they do– Well, ain't we pirates?" demanded Sammy boldly. "I guess when they find that out they'll sing pretty small. Besides, there's only one man and a dog."

"But isn't there a girl!" asked Dot doubtfully.

"Pooh! what's a girl!" demanded Sammy loftily. "Girls don't count. They can't fight."

"No-o. I s'pose not," admitted the smallest Corner House girl, who knew very well that she could not fight. She was willing to cook, wash and keep house for pirates; but Sammy must do the fighting.

However, Sammy Pinkney was to learn something about the canalboat girl that would open his eyes. Just at this time something occurred that startled both runaways so greatly that they even forgot the thunder that rolled so threateningly.

The canalboat began to move!

"Oh, dear me! what can have happened?" gasped Dot as the boat rocked and swayed in being poled out from the bank by the boatman, and the mules started along the towpath.

"Je-ru-sa-lem!" murmured Sammy.

"Oh, Sammy!"

"We're going," said the boy, gulping down his first surprise.

"But where are we going, Sammy Pinkney? You know very well Ruthie will be scared to death if I'm not back to supper. And your mother – "

"Huh!" exclaimed Sammy, with returning valor, "didn't I tell you if we ran away to be pirates that we couldn't go home again?"

"Yes! but! you! didn't ever mean it!" wailed Dot, with big gulps between her words.

"Of course I meant it. Aw, shucks, Dot! What did I tell you? Girls can't be pirates. They're always blubbering."

"Not blubbering!" snapped Dot, too angry to really cry after all.

"Well, you started in to."

"No, I never! Just the same I don't want to be shut up in this old boat – not after it stops thundering and lightering," declared Dot, who, as Tess was not present, felt free to misuse the English language just as she pleased.

Certainly Sammy Pinkney had something more important to think of than the little girl's language. Here he was, a pirate chief, on a buccaneering expedition, and somebody had come along and coolly stolen his piratical craft, himself, and his crew!

If anything would rouse the spirit of a pirate chief it was such an emergency as this. He looked around for something with which to attack the villains who had boarded the Nancy Hanks, but he found not a thing more dangerous than his pocketknife and the fishhooks.

"And that's your fault, Dot Kenway," he declared, stricken by this startling discovery. "How am I going to fight these – these pirates, if I haven't anything to fight 'em with?"

"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 canalboat."

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

"Huh!" ejaculated 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 canalboatman.

"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 assumption 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 canalboat, 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 canalboat 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!" ejaculated 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 canal 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 "gumballs."

"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 canalboat, the deck planks of which seemed so thick that nobody 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 gumballs 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 canalboat 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.