“We want to see your guns,” said Hodge.
“To blazes with you! I told you we had no guns, and you can see for yourselves. Do you see any guns?”
To Bart’s surprise, not a gun was to be seen in the boat. In the bottom, at one end, however, lay a pile of rushes, such as are sometimes bound on the front end of a boat when it creeps upon water birds, for the occupants of the boat to obtain a shot. Of a sudden, Frank leaned over and gave those reeds a yank.
Two shotguns were exposed to view!
Hodge gave a cry of triumph and anger, and Frank, with another sudden twist of his paddle, tried to back the canoe away from the boat.
The man uttered a cry of anger, and Welch leaped to his feet, catching up an oar.
“Oh, I’ll fix you!” he shouted, swinging the oar over his head and striking straight at Frank’s head.
Merry saw he could not get out of reach, and so, in a moment, he swung his paddle out of water and used it to divert the oar.
Crack!—the oar struck the paddle and was turned aside. Frank had saved his skull from being cracked by his swift move.
With a great splash, the oar struck in the water, and Welch was given a yank that set him toppling, in a frantic effort not to plunge headlong out of the boat. He let go of the oar and flung up his hands, waving them wildly, and then, finding he must go over, he dropped and caught at the side of the boat, overturning that in a twinkling.