Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/342

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320
LONELY O'MALLEY

the languid current, and attested to the success of their raid on Farmer Quinn's apple orchard.

But still the pirates were unhappy. The Greyhound had not proved a success; and the rainbow tints had gone out of their piratical dreams. For a week eight sad-eyed small boys had been limping and crawling about Chamboro with the bent backs and the halting gait of octogenarians.

"The trouble with this old thing is," said Redney McWilliams, with considerable disgust, "she ain't got no speed!"

He spat through his teeth deliberately, on one of those little piles of sand which lay heaped upon the deck, with great forethought, against the time when the Greyhound's timbers might become slippery with blood.

"Rowin' ain't such fun, either!" added Biff Perkins, looking pensively at the water-blisters on his hands.

The Captain was deep in thought. That fact you could tell by the way his arms were folded across his chest, and by the unusually heavy scowl that darkened his freckled brow.

"Men," he said, presently, striding back