“Oh!” gasped Dot, hugging her Alice-doll the tighter.
“How much treasure was there, Mr. Kuk?” asked the ever-practical Tess.
“A chist full,” announced the clam digger without a moment’s hesitation. “A reg’lar treasure-chist full. All them planters hadn’t had ready cash money to pay for the warmin’ pans, and they’d give in exchange di’monds and other jools—and the exchange rates for American money was high anyway. So the Spankin’ Sal was a mighty good ketch if the pi-rats ketched her.
“So, when we sailed from Porto Rico we kep’ a weather eye open for black-painted schooners with rakin’ masts an’ skulls and shinbones on their flags. When we seed them signs we’d know they was pi-rats,” declared Kuk, gravely.
The small Corner House girls sighed in unison—and in delight! “The plot thickens!” whispered Agnes to Ruth behind the flap of the tent where they were listening, likewise, though unbeknown to Kuk and the children.
“Go on, please, Mr. Kuk,” breathed Tess.
“Oh, do!” said Dot.
“Well, shipmets,” said the old clam digger, “bein’ peaceful merchantmen, as ye might say, we hadn’t shipped aboard the Spankin’ Sal to fight no pi-rats,” declared Kuk, with energy. “We wasn’t no sogers, and we told the skipper so.
“‘We’ll fight,’ says I. Bein’ an officer—carpenter’s mate, as I told ye—I was spokesman for the crew. ‘But we wants ter fight with weepons as we air fermiliar with. Let you and the ossifers fire the cannon, skipper,’ says I, ‘and give us fellers that was bred along shore an’ on the farms some o’ them scythes out’n the lower holt.
“‘Cutlasses an’ muskets,’ says I, ‘is all right for them as has been brought up with ’em,’ says I, ‘but, skipper, me an’ my shipmets has been better used ter cuttin’ swamp-grass an’ mowin’ oats. Give us the weepons we air fermiliar with.’