“Let’s go aboard!” puffed Peter. “I’ll bet we’ll find all sorts of useful things. Oh Jimminee! Look! It’s a pirate ship!” Peter pointed to the gold skull and cross bones below the ship’s name, his voice trembling with eagerness. Even Ruggedo’s eyes began to snap and sparkle with excitement. “That would mean treasure chests,” muttered the old gnome greedily. There was a rusty chain ladder hanging over the ship’s side and, seizing the lowest rung, Peter swung himself up and in less than no time had reached the ship’s deck. How long it had lain at the bottom of the sea was hard to say, but the planks were water soaked and rotten and everything was crumbling with rust and decay. As the Gnome King dropped down beside Peter, a thunderous explosion shook the boards beneath their feet. [Illustration] “Another one!” roared Ruggedo, clapping his hands over his ears. “Another what?” shouted Peter, who was not quite sure what had happened in the first place. “Sea quake!” quavered the gnome, cowering back against the ship’s cabin. And Ruggedo was right. For a moment longer the strange stretch of sea bed quivered on the surface of the waves. Then, with a splash, grind and rumble, it went crashing back to the bottom and the hungry waves of the Nonestic Ocean tossed and tumbled over the place where it had been. Now the same terrific shock that hurled the sea land back to the depths of the ocean dislodged the crumbling old pirate wreck and hurled it high into the air. With a shattering smack it smote the churning waters, rocked violently backward and forward, finally righting itself. “Well, I’ll be scuppered!” Letting go of the ring in the cabin door to which he had clung during the whole excitement, Ruggedo slid down to a sitting position on the deck. Peter, with one arm hooked about the ship’s railing, was so surprised to find himself alive that he did not speak for several moments. “Well!” he coughed finally, “at least we have a boat!” “If we hadn’t come aboard we’d have been at the bottom of the sea by this time,” shuddered Ruggedo, as Peter sank down beside him. “I believe you’ve brought me good luck, boy, and when I reach my kingdom I’ll make you general of all my armies.” “Thanks,” murmured Peter, smiling faintly, “but I’ll have to be getting back to Philadelphia. My grandfather will be worried, besides I’m captain of our baseball team and there’s a big game on soon.” “Would you rather be captain of a baseball team than an army?” asked Ruggedo, staring at the little boy in real amazement. He didn’t know just what a baseball team was, but felt that it could not compare with his army of gnomes.