"Yes!" said Freddie. "That's just what I said that day after the theatre!"
"I wonder," said the Old Codger with the Wooden Leg, "I wonder if—er—ahem!—if Captain Lingo has—er—such a thing as a pinch of snuff about him."
CHAPTER XVII
HIGH DUDGEON AND LOW DUDGEON
The pirate captain and his men rose from the ground, and Captain Lingo, in his politest manner, requested his captives to follow him. The entire party moved down the slope into the valley, and after a walk of some quarter of a mile entered a grove of trees. In this grove were tethered ten handsome mules, of which seven were saddled and three were laden with packs.
One of the pack-mules was quickly unladen, a fire was built, and in ten minutes the hungry guests and their hosts were making a very good breakfast of bacon, fried by Mr. Leatherbread, as the captain called him, one of the pirates to whom the business of the frying-pan was left by general consent. When the bacon had been washed down with clear cold water from a spring near by, and the mule had been packed again, Freddie and Aunt Amanda were assisted into the saddles of the two smallest mules, and the captain mounted into the saddle of the largest.
"Now look here, Captain Lingo," said Aunt Amanda, "I want to know where we are going and all about it. The idea of me sitting here a-straddle of a mule! And this bonnet simply ruined, and my dress just about fit to go to the rag-bone man, and my hair—Look here, Captain Lingo, I ain't going a step on this mule until you tell me what—"
"Pardon me, my dear lady," said the captain, "but I must ask you to put up with my little whims a short while longer. I beg the pleasure of your society