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"Up with her, fellers!" shouted Sandy, who, since Scootsy's unmanly tears, had risen to first place. "Run it under the bowsprit up with her there she goes! Altogether!" Archie took his stand, his long sapling in his hand, and waited.
"Salt water skims off Archie same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n you kin a can buoy." The boy has never forgotten Scootsy's epithet, although he has never spoken of it to his mother no one knows her now by any other name. She thought the episode had passed out of his mind, but she did not know everything that lay in the boy's heart.
With this Archie dropped to his knees and crouched close to the heel of the rotting bowsprit, out of the way of the flying missiles each boy's pockets were loaded and looking cautiously over the side of the hulk, waited until Scootsy's dirty fingers he was climbing the chain hand over hand, his feet resting on a boy below him came into view. "Off there, or I'll crack your fingers!"
And so for a time the remembrance of Scootsy's epithet faded out of the boy's mind. Ten years have passed away. The sturdy little fellow in knee-trousers is a lad of seventeen, big and strong for his age; Tod is three years older, and the two are still inseparable. The brave commander of the pirate ship is now a full-fledged fisherman and his father's main dependence.
"He ain't got no mammy," snarled Scootsy. "He's a pick-up me father says so." Archie sprang forward to avenge the insult, but before he could reach Scootsy's side a yell arose from the bow of the hulk. "Yi! yi! Run, fellers! Here comes old man Fogarty! he's right on top o' ye! Not that side this way. Yi! yi!"
Contrary, however, to Fogarty's hopes and surmises, Archie had forgotten neither Sandy's insult nor Scootsy's epithet. "He's a pick-up" and "he ain't got no mammy" kept ringing in his ears as he walked back up the beach to his home. He remembered having heard the words once before when he was some years younger, but then it had come from a passing neighbor and was not intended for him.
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