o stop at Purdy's to git that mess of
'taters he said he'd have ready for us?"

There was a grumbling reply from the man.

"Dunno. It's rainin' so hard. Might's well keep right on to Durginville,
I reckon, Lowise."

"Durginville!" murmured Sammy. "My! that's a long way off, Dot!"

"And are you going to let 'em carry us off this way?" demanded the
little girl in growing alarm and disgust. "Why, I thought you were a
pirate!"

If pirates were such dreadful people as Sammy had just intimated, she
wanted to see him exercise some of that savagery in this important
matter. Dot Kenway had not considered being kidnapped and carried away
from Milton when she set forth to be a pirate's mate. She expected him
to defend her from disaster.

Sammy saw the point. It was "up to him," and he was too much of a man to
shirk the issue. After all, he realized that, although actually led away
from home by this determined little girl, he was the one who had fully
understood the enormity of what they were doing. In his own unuttered
but emphatic phrase, "She was only a kid."

"All right, Dot," he declared with an assumption of confidence that he
certainly did not feel. "I'll see about our getting out of this right
away. Of course we won't want to go to Durginville. And it's stopping
raining now, anyway, I guess."

The sound of the thunder was rolling away into the distance. But other
sounds, too, seemed to have retreated as Sammy climbed the ladder to
reach the hatch-cover. The hatchway was all of six feet square. The
heavy plank cover that fitted tightly over it, was a weight far too
great for a ten year old boy to lift.

Sammy very soon made this discovery. Dot, scarcely able to see him from
below, the hold was so dark, made out that he was balked by something.

"Can't you budge it, Sammy?" she asked anxiously.

"I--I guess it's locked," he puffed.

"Oo-ee!" she gasped. "Holler, Sammy! Holler!"

Sammy "hollered." He was getting worried himself now. It was bad enough
to contemplate facing a man who might not be fond of pirates--even small
ones. But if they could not get out of the hold of the canalboat, they
would not be able to face the man or anybody else.

The thought struck terror to the very soul of Sammy. Had he been alone
he certainly would have done a little of that "blubbering" that he had
just now accused Dot of doing. But "with a girl looking on a fellow
couldn't really give way to unmanly tears."

He began to pou