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.