Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/299

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THE GREYHOUND STEPS FORTH
277

in vain for men to man his ship. If there was so much as a jelly-roll in the provision chest, you were sure to find the voracious First Mate absent from his post. The final result was that both Captain and crew had to fall back on early harvest apples and an occasional mess of boiled potatoes, garnered from waterside gardens when the owners thereof were wrapt in sweetly unconscious slumber. When the apples were over-green, they were baked, or rather half-baked, in the old cook-stove whose three rusty joints of purloined stove-pipe protruded uncommonly like the muzzle of a six-inch gun from the port side of the Greyhound's cabin.

Not that this gallant ship did not carry arms more deadly! Every man who walked her decks was armed, if not with sling-shot and bow and arrow, at least with a key gun. If you have never used or known a key gun, of course you cannot understand just how deadly it is. 'T is made from an old key, hollow of shank, and the bigger the key the better. A touch-hole is supplied by filing through to the inner end of the hollow, a few grains of priming powder are sprinkled on this