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TOM PAGDIN—PIRATE.


CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER.                                           PAGE.

        I.—Pirates All                                    1

       II.—Under the Tamarind Tree                       17

      III.—The Pirates’ First Cruise                     32

       IV.—Waiting in the Dark                           43

        V.—The Escape                                    52

       VI.—They Take an Oath                             62

      VII.—Tom Conducts a Raid                           73

     VIII.—George of the “_Greenwich_” Goes Fishing      88

       IX.—George Declines a Task                        95

        X.—The Story of Jean Petit                      106

       XI.—The Sea is Merciful                          115

      XII.—Jean Petit Pays a Visit                      122

     XIII.—Captured                                     128

      XIV.—The Genesis of a Love Story                  134

       XV.—The Robbery is Discovered                    142

      XVI.—An Inquest                                   153

     XVII.—The Rush for the Boat                        164

    XVIII.—Tom Pagdin Goes Gunning                      176

     XIX.—The Pirate’s Last Cruise                      189

      XX.—The Ultimatum                                 200




ILLUSTRATIONS.


    The Pirate in Purgatory                   _Frontispiece_

                                                       PAGE

    The Murder                                           56

    The Death of the German                             124

    Trapped at Last                                     179




[Illustration: The Pirate in Purgatory.

_Tom Pagdin, Pirate._

_Page 8._]


TOM PAGDIN
PIRATE

by

E. J. BRADY

With four full-page illustrations by Lionel Lindsay.






Sydney
N.S.W. Bookstall Co.
1911

Copyrighted by Alfred Cecil Rowlandson,
476 George Street, Sydney.—1911.

Printed by Simmons-Bloxham Ltd., Sydney.




CHAPTER I.

PIRATES ALL.


The Broadstream punt was grating gently on the pebbles at the South Side.
Morning, gowned in silver grey, with trimmings of gold, still slept
voluptuously on her divan in the Orient East. The mists were slowly
lifting from the river, but hung yet lovingly along the creeks and upon
the reedy lagoons.

Tom Pagdin, with his bare legs hanging over the rails of the punt,
watched the cork floater of his fishing line sleepily. His bamboo rod
cast a clear shadow in the water of the deep Broadstream. It was a new
rod, cut some days before from the lower boundary of Henry Dobie’s
garden. Old Tom Pagdin was not on speaking terms with Dobie, hence young
Tom had taken that rod; at dusk, knowing that the particular commandment
relating to the case was temporarily suspended.

Old Tom (cheerfully so-called by roystering fishermen) rented the
Broadstream punt from the Government, which he regarded as his natural
enemy. It was only at election times that Pagdin, senior, got anything
like even with the Government, exercising the right of secret ballot
against the sitting member behind his back, while pretending absolute
fealty to his face. On these occasions the puntman invariably came home
to the little shanty by the riverside glorious, and next day young Tom
was usually too sore to sit down with any degree of comfort.

But the life of a boy on the Broadstream could not possibly be dull for
long, and the thrashings which Tom Pagdin so regularly received at the
hands of the ‘old man’ possibly gave greater relish to his pleasures.

In the Northern streams the perch bite best in the early morning, but it
happened that the fish were dainty, or shy, and even the black cricket
still kicking on the hook did not draw them.

So, when a waterhen came out on the broad green leaves of the lilies,
which were just opening their purple flowers to the rising sun, Tom
Pagdin let his rod drop gently in the water, drew his catapult from the
pocket of his frayed trousers, fitted a carefully-chosen pebble in the
sling, and let fly.

“Hit ’m!” he shouted, triumphantly, flicked the line out of the water,
sprang to the handle of the windlass, and commenced to work the punt with
all speed to the opposite side.

He was about midway across when the wheels of a milk-cart, en route to
the creamery with full