"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."