e ship. I am unaccustomed to such conduct."

"Hear me--she is my mother!"

"She certainly is old enough to be," replied the mermaid; "and to speak
of that being her own hair!" she added with a scornful laugh, as she
rearranged her own luxuriant tresses with characteristic grace, a comb,
and a small hand-mirror.

"If I couldn't afford any other clothes, I might wear a switch, too!"
hissed the Amazonian queen. "I suppose you don't dye it on account of
the salt water. But perhaps you prefer green, dear?"

"A little salt water might improve your own complexion, love."

"Fishwoman!" screamed the Amazonian queen.

"Bloomerite!" shrieked the mermaid.

In another instant they had seized each other.

"Mutiny! Overboard with them!" cried the Pirate Prodigy, rising to the
occasion, and casting aside all human affection in the peril of the
moment.

A plank was brought and two women placed upon it.

"After you, dear," said the mermaid, significantly, to the Amazonian
queen; "you're the oldest."

"Thank you!" said the Amazonian queen, stepping back. "Fish is always
served first."

Stung by the insult, with a wild scream of rage, the mermaid grappled
her in her arms and leaped into the sea.

As the waters closed over them forever, the Pirate Prodigy sprang to
his feet. "Up with the black flag, and bear away for New London," he
shouted in trumpet-like tones. "Ha, ha! Once more the Rover is free!"

Indeed it was too true. In that fatal moment he had again loosed
himself from the trammels of human feeling, and was once more the Boy
Avenger.

CHAPTER III

Again I must ask my young friends to mount my hippogriff and hie with
me to the almost inaccessible heights of the Rocky Mountains. There,
for years, a band of wild and untamable savages, known as the "Pigeon
Feet," had resisted the blankets and Bibles of civilization. For years
the trails leading to their camp were marked by the bones of teamsters
and broken wagons, and the trees were decked with the drying scalp
locks of women and children. The boldest of military leaders hesitated
to attack them in their fortresses, and prudently left the scalping
knives, rifles, powder, and shot, provided by a paternal government for
their welfare, lying on the ground a few miles from their encampment,
with the request that they were not to be used until the military had
safely retired. Hitherto, save an occasional incursion into the
territory of the "Knock-knees,"