Chapter 10

SHOWS THE CREW OF THE VAGABOND UNDER FIRE

Even Barry seemed to appreciate the awkwardness of the situation. He got out of the chair he was occupying, jumped on to the stern seat, put his front paws on the coaming, and looked back inquiringly at the approaching craft, his little black nose sniffing and twitching. Then he jumped down, trotted to the engine-room entrance, looked in, and scratched twice on the brass sill, as though begging Nelson to start up the engine again. After that he climbed to the side deck, from there to the roof of the cabin, and settled down, shivering in the little, chill evening breeze, against the wheel, on which Bob was leaning. He had done his best for them; now they would have to look after themselves; personally he was going to sleep.

Spencer Floyd, anxious but silent, sat, out of sight again, with his back against one of the doors beside the entrance. Dan stood up, hands in pockets of his duck trousers, and watched the on-coming tugboat with smiling face. Tom, too, was on his feet, but he didn’t stand still, nor were smiles visible on his rotund countenance. He went nervously from Dan to the cabin entrance, where he leaned down and asked Nelson how he was coming on. All the reply he received was a growl.

“There’s our friend the captain in the bow,” observed Dan. “Dear old captain! How I long to meet him once more! By the way, Spencer, you’d better go down and keep out of sight as long as you can. My old friend the captain has a quick temper, and the sight of you might infuriate him. It would be awful if he went mad and bit the bow off the tug.”

Tom giggled hysterically.

“Wu-wu-wu-wish he’d fu-fu-fu-fall over-bu-bu-board!” he said.

“The wish does you credit, Tommy,” answered Dan, as he followed Spencer below. “I’ll be right up again, fellows,” he added.

Nelson, on the floor beside the engine, was toiling desperately, the perspiration trickling down his nose. About him lay sections of the brass vaporizer, wrenches, screwdrivers, and nippers. He looked up inquiringly as Dan went by toward the stateroom.

“Oh, she’s about a couple of hundred yards away,” said Dan lightly.

“I’m almost through,” said Nelson. “Keep them off two minutes more, Dan, and I’ll try the engine again.”

“Oh, we’ll keep them off! That’s right, Spencer, my lad, you lie down there and be comfortable. And don’t you worry; old Bluebeard hasn’t got you yet!”

As he went up the steps he turned and called down softly to Nelson:

“Here they are, Nel, coming alongside. But I’ll see that you get your two minutes, so keep agoing.”

The tug’s engine had stopped and she was sliding slowly forward through the water with her bow set for the Vagabond’s port rail. On the forward deck stood the captain of the Henry Nellis, the tugboat captain, and another man, possibly a mate. The cook, a long and much-soiled apron enveloping his portly form, looked on interestedly from the door of the galley. In the wheelhouse was a third hand. On the face of Captain Sauder was a smile of triumph which struck those on the launch as being far more disagreeable than his scowl.

“Pretty smart, weren’t yer?” greeted the captain as the tug floated up. There was no reply, and the captain concluded to attempt sarcasm.

“Real nice of you to stop and wait for us,” he said with a chuckle; “real friendly, I call it.”

“Captain,” answered Dan sweetly and earnestly, “we’ve been simply devastated with grief since we left you. Your gentle words and kindly deeds won our hearts, and we just couldn’t go on without one more sight of your dear face.” (“Keep her off with the boat hook,” he muttered aside to Bob.) “And—yes, you have,” cried Dan joyfully, “you’ve brought your dear face with you, haven’t you? I was afraid you’d change it!”

The captain and the crew of the tug were smiling broadly, but the object of Dan’s raillery went purple in his “dear face,” and his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. (“For all the world,” as Tom said afterward, “as though he was going to bu-bu-bust up!”)

“You young whelp!” he roared.

A bell rang in the engine room and the tug—the Scout, as the gilt letters over the wheelhouse announced—trembled as the propeller was reversed. Up came the bow with its big rope fender, and Bob, boat hook in hand, stood ready. As the tug slid alongside Bob reached out with the hook, and the tug, instead of nestling up to the launch, sheered off.

“Here! What are you doing that for?” yelled Captain Sauder.

“Saving our paint,” answered Bob calmly. There was five feet of water between the two boats.

“Bring your boat hook here!” called the tugboat captain to one of the hands. “You boys might as well give in,” he added, not unkindly. “You’re beat, I guess. Where’s Captain Sauder’s boy?”

“Didn’t you meet him?” asked Dan, in surprise. (“Don’t let that fellow get his hook on to us, Bob!”) “Why, he started to walk back half an hour ago; said he couldn’t stay away from the captain there any longer. Sure you didn’t pass him?”

The tugboat captain chuckled. But Captain Sauder, muttering inarticulate things, seized the boat hook from the deck hand and sprang toward the stern, which was now opposite the cockpit of the launch. There was an eight-foot haft on the hook he held, and he would have experienced no difficulty in reaching the launch had not Bob interfered. But every time the captain tried to get his hook fixed around one of the awning posts or over the edge of the coaming, Bob politely but firmly knocked it away. The captain’s remarks were unfit for publication, and even Barry looked pained. After a moment of this duel the tugboat captain came to the rescue.

“Back her and bring her alongside,” he called to the man at the wheel. The bell rang and the Scout slid back a few yards. The bell rang again, the man at the wheel twirled the spokes around, and the blunt nose of the tug poked its way toward the launch’s quarter. On the bow stood the captain of the Henry Nellis, ready to leap aboard the Vagabond as soon as the boats touched.

Tom, I think, would have liked to saunter below about this time, but to his credit let it be known that he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he stood firmly in the center of the cockpit and grinned pathetically. Dan, glancing swiftly about him, saw that grin and wondered whether Tom would ever be able to get it off again. Then the tug was ready to bump and the moment for action had arrived.

Bob did his best with the boat hook, but the tug had too much way on to be stopped or shoved aside. Bob, although he went red in the face, had to give ground. Then the two boats met with a shock that almost threw Tom off his feet, but did not disturb his grin, and Captain Sauder made ready to jump.

But he didn’t jump, because he happened to look to see where he was going, and in looking caught sight of the revolver in Dan’s hand. The muzzle of it, which was pointing directly at the captain, glistened uncannily in the twilight, and the captain paused. There followed a moment of silence, disturbed only by the sound of Nelson’s hurried footsteps in the cabin. Then——

“Drop that!” roared the captain of the Henry Nellis.

But Dan did nothing of the sort. Instead he asked:

“Where are you going, captain?”

“I’m going to fetch that boy you’ve run away with!” was the answer. “Don’t you think you can scare me with that toy pistol!”

“Nonsense!” answered Dan quietly. “You know this isn’t a toy, captain. It’s got five thirty-two bullets in it, and I’m just dying to see whether they’ll come out if I pull the trigger. It’s a mighty easy sort of a trigger, too,” he added musingly.

Bob and Tom stared fascinatedly, Tom’s grin spreading until it revealed his teeth and made him look like a catfish; or so, at least, Bob declared later on. Captain Sauder stared, too, and so did the others on the tub. But no one seemed inclined to offer advice or to step into the range of Dan’s revolver. Captain Sauder growled and swore under his breath, and his fists clenched until the veins stood out on the backs like cords.

“You’d murder me, would ye?” he said finally.

“Not a bit of it, captain,” answered Dan cheerfully. “I’d do my best to plug you in some place where it wouldn’t really matter very much. But I’m not a dead-sure shot, you know, and I might make a mistake. Anyhow, there’s one thing certain”—and Dan’s voice rang out earnestly—“and that is that if you put your dirty old feet on this deck you’re going to get shot, I don’t know just where, and what’s more I don’t care. You might as well believe that.”

And the captain, looking at Dan’s flashing blue eyes and bristling red hair, somehow did believe it. He shook his fist in Dan’s face.

“I’ll get you yet, my boy!” he growled. “And when I do——”

Turning, he stumbled aft and disappeared into the deck house.

“He’s after a pistol!” warned Bob. “Everyone get to cover!”

Spencer tumbled helter-skelter down the steps, followed by Tom and Bob. But Dan held his ground, although his face paled.

On the Scout everybody seemed for a moment paralyzed. Then the tugboat captain turned and ran clumsily toward the deck-house door, and the sailor who had been holding the two boats together with a boat hook fixed around the after cleat of the launch dropped the haft and disappeared quickly around the other side of the cabin. Probably he thought he was too near the scene of action. Captain Sander must have known where to look for a weapon, for before the tugboat captain had reached the door he was back again with a formidable revolver in his hand and his face convulsed with passion.

“Stop that!” cried the captain of the tug. “You can’t shoot folks on my boat! You haven’t hired me for a warship!” And hurrying to the other, he seized the arm that held the revolver.

“Let go o’ me!” bellowed Captain Sauder.

“You give me my pistol and I will,” panted the other. There was a struggle, in which one sought to wrest away the weapon and the other to keep possession of it and throw off his adversary. Bob, viewing the conflict from the cabin doorway, called to Dan.

“Come down here, Dan!” he commanded. “Don’t be a fool! He’ll shoot you, sure!”

But Dan held his ground, revolver in hand.

Then several things happened simultaneously. Tom pushed Bob aside, hurled himself across the cockpit, locked his arms around Dan’s legs and brought him crashing to the deck; Captain Sauder broke away from his opponent, raised his revolver and fired; and the Vagabond churned the water under her stern and darted away at full speed.

The captain’s aim had been hurried and the bullet sped singing through the air several feet above the launch, and before he could pull the trigger the second time the captain and mate of the tug had borne him back against the side of the deck house and wrested the revolver from his hand. The Vagabond, with no one at the wheel, charged across the tug’s bow and headed for the west. On the floor of the cockpit Dan was fighting and struggling to regain both his feet and the revolver which he had dropped under the suddenness of the attack, and which now lay beyond his reach.

“Let me up!” he panted.

“In a mu-mu-mu-minute!” gasped Tom, still holding on as though for dear life. Then Bob sprang to the wheel, brought the Vagabond’s head again into the course for Provincetown, and looked back at the tug, already a couple of hundred yards astern. The two captains were still arguing it out near the cabin door, but the mate was on his way to the wheelhouse. A deck hand was trying to recover the boat hook, which had fallen into the water when the Vagabond started up. In a moment he had succeeded, and the tug’s nose swung around and pointed toward Sanstable. A minute later she was on her way home, billowing smoke from her stack and evidently resolved to make up for lost time. Bob called to Tom.

“Let him up, Tommy,” he said.

Nelson, rubbing the oil and grease from his hands with a bunch of waste, appeared at the door.

“Wh-what the dickens!” he cried in amazement as he looked.

“Oh, Tommy and Dan have been having a little football!” answered Bob. Dan climbed to his feet and observed Tom disgustedly.

“You think you’re mighty smart, I suppose!” he growled. “For two cents I’d bump your silly fat head against——”

“Cut it out!” said Bob sharply. “You’ve made a fool of yourself long enough, Dan. You came near getting yourself plugged full of holes, and Tommy did just right. You think yourself a bloody hero, I dare say, but you ought to be kicked. Nice mess you’d made of it if that old terror had put a bullet into you! Next time I go cruising, I’ll bet there’ll be no red-headed lunatics aboard! Hand me my revolver!”

Dan, abashed, picked up the pistol and gave it to its owner.

“You needn’t be so blamed grouchy,” he muttered.

“You’d make anyone grouchy,” answered Bob. “And I want you to understand that you’re to let my things alone after this.” He broke the revolver to extract the cartridges. Then he looked in surprise at Dan.

“Why,” he cried, “it isn’t loaded!”

“I suppose I know it, don’t I?” growled Dan. “I couldn’t find your silly old cartridges!”