s breast. If
they were going away together, it should be his "treat." He marched into
the house, smashed his bank with the kitchen poker, and came out with a
pocket full of silver and nickels that looked as if they amounted to
much more than they really did.

However, the sinews of war in his pocket was not without a certain
inspiration and comfort. Money would go a long way toward getting them
to a place where their respective families could neither nag nor punish
them.

As runaways they may have been different from most. But, then, Sammy
and Dot were very modern runaways indeed. People who saw them merely
observed two very well dressed children, walking hand in hand toward the
suburbs of Milton; the little girl hugging a doll to her breast and the
boy with a tight fist in one pocket holding down a couple of dollars
worth of change.

Who would have dreamed that they were enamored of being pirates and
expected to follow a career of rapine and bloodthirsty adventure on the
Spanish Main?

CHAPTER X

ABOARD THE NANCY HANKS

It must be confessed--and not to the belittlement of Sammy Pinkney--that
he never would have run away to be a pirate on this occasion had it not
been for Dot Kenway. When this little miss had once set her mind to a
thing it took a good deal to turn her from her purpose.

It had been Sammy's dire threat for a long time that he would seek the
adventurous life of a buccaneer on the rolling main. But he had never
set a definite date for his departure upon this venture. To-day was the
day. Fate willed it thus. And it looked as though fate was disguised in
the character of a strong-minded little girl with two cherry-red
hair-ribbons and a doll hugged tightly in her arms.

Sammy, however, having once embarked on the venture considered that he
must take a certain lead in affairs. Dot certainly had urged him away
from home and mother; but now she gave up the guidance of affairs
entirely into her companion's hands.

She had no more idea of what "being pirates" meant than she had of the
location where "pirating" as a profession might be safely pursued. On
Sammy's part, he knew that pirates roved the sea. The nearest water to
the corner of Willow and Main Streets was the canal. Therefore he led
the little girl by the hand toward that rather placid body of water that
flowed through one end of Milton and into the river.

The canal connected two tributaries of a large watercourse--the largest
in