Barney Blake, The Boy Privateer

t all happened on board the Big Thunder. She was a

ollygoster. "Come now, Massa Bluefis

went to bed feelin' fu'st-rate. It was kinder calm, with a prospect of being more so 'an ever. When I wakes up in the mornin' I was somewhat taken aback at seein' that a ne

affair, the first lieutenant, he comes roarin' d

n!' I si

' like the very Old Scratch, and inspectin'

s up?'

ee this 'ere yaller p

s,' I r

where at the keel and grows up higher than the peak of the main

ravin', incomprehensibl

the lieutenant, 'but com

between the mizzenmast and the tiller, reachin' about forty feet higher than the tallest mast on board. All the crew were standin' ro

Trybrace. "Takin' observations

't got no edication, is it my fault? If you was brought

I takes a cutlass down from the mast, and begins to cut little chips of

" sugge

ne," said

a," suggest

r shorter, nor hotter, nor reddern'n BLOOD. That 'ere's what

they see'd the blood flowin', and some on 'em was m

ce how slow the

they

n' much o' any headway, though

and doesn't yer kn

t on it,'

n,' says I. 'He's pierced the craft in the night, an' thi

an' sharp as a needle. Sure as yer live, it was all true. Well, it was a question what to do with the thing. Most on 'em was in favor of goin' down inter the hold, and cuttin' off t

mast for nothin' every day in the week, and I'm in

at this 'ere, but I didn't give '

ive under the keel with a handsaw and cu

t, not one on 'em wa

elf. Carpenter, bring me yer handsaw, an' jist sh

ard I goes with the saw between my teeth. I dove right under the keel in a jiffy, and thar, sure enough, lays the swor

ou goin' ter

o?" brok

s dat?" demanded Snollygoster, with

hey talk like lawyers when they git inter a scrape? I knowed a fell

', says he ter me, 'Wha

se from the ship,

he," only I'm afear

ys I; and with that I grabs his no

on to a bu'stin' big volcano, an' I reckon it did. But I kept on sawin' and sawin', till at last the varmint dropped off, while the sea for 'bout ten miles round t

o have swallered a seventy-four, without so much as a toothache. But we fired a broadside of shra

t it hard and dry. So I jist had a set of spars and sails rigged

his pipe, from which we judged tha

uefish?" asked the innocen

n rejoinder. "It was a thing as o

some of us had our d

se who were not on duty, a

nto it. I found them firm, and was about to turn in for a long snooze, when a crash in anoth

cky Drake's hammock-strings had been all but severed, and he, u

the verdant youth, in a rage, plucking out his jack-kni

ing!" Tony Trybrace opin

er who did it?" S

doer of the deed was not found; and Dicky Drake sw

arms of Morpheus, dreaming of the land I had left, and of t