"Now, you come right along, Sammy Pinkney, if we're going to run away and be pirates. You know your mother won't let you if she comes home and catches you here." "But--but we ought to take something to eat--and some clothes--and--and a pistol and a knife--" "Oo-ee!" squealed the little girl. "You won't take any horrid pistol and knife if you're going to run off to be pirates with _me_, Sammy Pinkney. Why, I'd be afraid to go with you." "Huh!" grumbled Sammy, "you don't haf to go." "But you said I could," Dot declared, sure of her position. "And now you can't back out--you know you can't, Sammy. That wouldn't be fair." "Aw, well. We gotter have money," he objected faintly. "I'll run and get my purse," the little girl said cheerfully. "I've got more than fifty cents in it." But now unwonted chivalry began to stir faintly in Sammy'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.