“I kin buy some plug at the corner grocery,” said Pirate Jim, “only I left my portmoney at home.”
“Take this watch,” said young Golightly; “’tis my father’s. Since he became a tyrant and usurper, and forced me to join a corsair’s band, I’ve begun by dividing the property.”
“This is idle trifling,” said young Chitterlings wildly. “Every moment is precious. Is this an hour to give to wine and wassail? Ha, we want action—action! We must strike the blow for freedom to-night—ay, this very night. The scow is already anchored in the mill-dam, freighted with provisions for a three months’ voyage. I have a black flag in my pocket. Why, then, this cowardly delay?”
The two elder youths turned with a slight feeling of awe and shame to gaze on the glowing cheeks and high, haughty crest of their youngest comrade—the bright, the beautiful Bromley Chitterlings. Alas! that very moment of forgetfulness and mutual admiration was fraught with danger. A thin, dyspeptic, half-starved tutor approached.
“It is time to resume your studies, young gentlemen,” he said, with fiendish politeness.
They were his last words on earth.
“Down, Tyrant!” screamed Chitterlings.
“Sic him—I mean, sic semper tyrannis!” said the classical Golightly.
A heavy blow on the head from a baseball bat, and the rapid projection of a baseball against his empty stomach, brought the tutor a limp and lifeless mass to the ground. Golightly shuddered. Let not my young readers blame him too rashly. It was his first homicide. “Search his pockets,” said the practical Jenkins.
They did so, and found nothing hut a Harvard Triennial Catalogue.