It was now dusk. The party slipped out from behind the shell-heap, and the leader shouted, “Back water there an’ stop, or I’ll fire.”
No reply was made, but he caught the words, “Pull, pull;” and the quicker dip of the oars told that the rowers heeded.
“Another yard and I’ll fire.”
No word of reply—but, spoken loud and with vengeance, “Pull, damn you, pull.”
“Fire, Jim;” and the huge musket thundered out her volley.
A shriek from one poor devil, the noise of others falling over in the boat, and the striking of oars followed. With oaths and confusion, the outlaws turned their boat and pulled back.
Black Jim stood stiff in the tracks where he had fired, but the big musket lay upon the ground—the recoil had broken his collar-bone.
In the morning the schooner was gone. Week after week went by, and the scattered inhabitants continually expected some descent of the outlaws to take vengeance for their repulse. Jim’s collar-bone was well knit together, and yet there had been no further molestation.
“I guess we fixed ’em. They don’t seem to want to come anymore,” remarked one of the party to a neighbor.
More than six weeks had passed since that one charge of buckshot repulsed the outlaws, and June was half gone. The Bay’s rest spell was come—the time when, day after day, its surface is calm, and the air above it quivers—the time when the Beach goes off to its farthest limit and melts into islands with air inlets between them.