"Up with 'em, you pirate!" cried Mart, shifting his big gun a trifle so that Birch's glittering black eye looked full in the muzzle.
"Don't shoot, ye fool!" gasped Birch, flinging up his arms, and Mart knew he had won.
The men stood looking up, evil-eyed, panting with their exertions at the pumps, while Bob swiftly emptied their revolver-belts of weapons and knives and was up the ladder to the deck again, flinging down his load.
"You ain't a-goin' to murder poor old Jerry!" cried Dailey sharply. Mart winced.
"Bob," he returned, "you'll have to go down and keep those pumps going. Hurry up, now!"
His chum, rather pale-faced and flurried, hastened down again and began turning the double handle of the pumps, while the four men crowded beyond the ladder.
"Drop those lines, Borden," ordered Mart sternly, and the old seaman obeyed without demur. "Now unfasten that boat and get into her! Pile in, the whole crowd of you! Do it lively now! That's right. Get busy with those oars and row over to that island. When you get there, shove out that boat and let her float off, or I'll pepper you with a load o' buckshot."
"You ain't goin' for to maroon us there?"
"You're pirates and mutineers and I'm an officer o' this ship," replied Mart fiercely. "You step lively there or I'll send you where Jerry is, without any diving suit but with some buckshot in your back. Jump, now!"
Plainly, the men did not doubt either his intentions or his ability to fulfill his ferocious threat. While Bob continued his mechanical pumping, the four tumbled into the boat and pulled away without another word. Mart knew that once they were on the island, with the boat floated away, they were practically in prison. None of them would ever attempt swimming away to the mainland while the Pirate Shark was in the lagoon.