They were; and the trick had almost succeeded when we reached the strip of beach that Dupuyster was defending. The crippled electric launch, propelled by oars, and carrying possibly a dozen men, was half-way across the lagoon, heading straight for the beach, and coming on regardless of Jerry's rifle. Above the din of battle we could hear the shrill, squeaky voice of the fat cook encouraging his men. "Pull on ze oar, mes braves! Sacré tonnerre! eet is but wan man dat shoot ze gon!"
But when we came up there were five more to shoot, and instant and utter demoralization fell upon the attacking force. Shrieks of surrender in half a dozen different languages rent the still night air, and in a mad endeavor to turn the boat an oar was lost overboard.
If our situation had not been so critically desperate, there was enough of the comic-opera element in the frantic attempt to retreat to have brought down the house. As it was, Van Dyck stopped the firing and shouted to the mutineers to come ashore and surrender. Some of the men were evidently sick of their bargain and wanted to quit, but the squeaky cries of the chief robber dominated the tumult, and under a renewal of our bombardment the launch was got around and headed back to the yacht with much splashing and hard swearing. Also, when the goal of safety was reached, we could make out dimly that the accommodation ladder was let down, and that two or three members of the boat's crew had to be helped aboard.
A few minutes after this, we had audible proof of the correctness of Van Dyck's guess about the long-boat and the ingenious ruse to draw us off. The gasoline craft was coming back, as we could determine by the increasing loudness of its exhaust. Following its return to the yacht we were given another little breathing spell, and John Grey's quality of professional curiosity had an opportunity to show itself again.
"I can't understand for the life of me why these fellows should come back here and fight us so desperately for a chance to get ashore," he protested. "You can't make me believe that they're doing it on the strength of a silly yarn that is three hundred years old."
"What do you think about it, Captain 'Lige?" said Bonteck, ungenerously handing the tangle over to Goff.
"I wouldn't put it a mite apast 'em," was the skipper's guarded reply. "There was a good deal o' talk among the men about buried gold-mines and such on the way down from New Orleans. I ain't no gre't hand at the foreign lingoes, myself, but I picked up a word or two here and there."
"I don't more than half believe it, just the same," Grey persisted. "I tell you, these fellows are not fighting for the bare chance of proving or disproving that old story about the Santa Lucia's buried treasure. They've got inside information of some sort, and I'll bet on it."
"Maybe they have," said Goff, in a tone which said plainly that the matter was one not worth worrying about.