This part of the report was rather disconcerting. With the professor engrossed in his favorite study, anything might happen in the way of a jail delivery, and I said as much.
"Go and see about it, Dick," was Van Dyck's order, and I was about to obey when Billy Grisdale gripped my arm and pointed toward the yacht. On the deck of the Andromeda, where everything had been quiet since the firing of the shot which had driven the capstan repairers from their job, a dimly defined group of toilers were hoisting some heavy object to the roof of the raised deck house. I couldn't make out what they were doing, but Bonteck's eyes were better than mine.
"Duck and scatter!" he commanded sharply. "It's the little signal gun, and they're training it on us!"
We had dodged and run nimbly to right and left before the little brass signal piece belched fire and sent a volley of nondescript missiles hurtling into the scrub palmettos under which we had been crouching. What the desperate chief cook of the Andromeda hoped to accomplish by this haphazard bombardment of the jungle which, so far as he knew, sheltered a half-dozen of his own men as well as whatever enemy he thought he was firing at, was a mystery unexplained until after our scattered force was reassembled safely out of range.
But we were made to understand quickly enough. Under cover of the cannon fire, the electric launch slid out from its landing place upon the placid waters of the lagoon, cut a swift half-circle and headed for the open sea and the yacht. While we were watching and waiting, some one of the mutineers had emulated Dupuyster's daring example, and had swum ashore to steal the launch, thus putting an end to any notion we may have had of fighting the little war to a conclusion on the Andromeda's deck.
XVI
A MARATHON AND AN ULTIMATUM
Calling this bold cutting-out of the electric launch the close of the first bout, we were obliged to admit that the enemy had taken a hard fall out of us at the finish. As matters now stood, the advantage was with the mutineers. To be sure, we had six of their men, including their first mate and navigator, safely laid by the heels; and Jerry Dupuyster's plucky adventure had tied up the yacht, temporarily, at least. But without a boat we could not press the fighting, and the six hostages were more likely to prove a burden than a forfeit with which to bargain. Bassinette, or whoever it was who was commanding the mutineers, would know that he was dealing with men who would neither starve nor slay their prisoners; though he should have known, and doubtless did know, that we ourselves were by this time in dire straits for food. And as to the tethering anchor chain, they would surely be a witless lot aboard of the Andromeda if they should not remember that they could compel Haskell and his mechanician assistants to cut the cable.
It soon developed, however, that the amateur pirates were not thinking of running away. Shortly after the electric launch had whisked to safety under the stern of the yacht, it appeared again with a new crew to man it. At first we thought the militant chief cook was going to attempt a sortie and a rescue of the prisoners, but he had a better scheme than that, as we were presently to learn. Keeping outside of the enclosing reef, he sent the launch slowly westward, holding it far enough out to be beyond pistol range, but paralleling the reef as if seeking for another inlet. Elijah Goff hazarded a guess at his intention.