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.