“Evidently our friend believes we have come up with a liquor smuggler,” said Captain Folsom, in an aside, to the boys.
But the old skipper, whose craft was drawing away while the Nark rocked idly in the swell, with her engines barely turning over, merely repeated his gesture of putting a hand to his ear, and once more called:
“Heh. Heh.”
Suddenly the deck beneath the feet of the boys quivered slightly, there was the report of a three-pounder, and a shot fell across the bow of the old schooner, kicking up a feather of spray. The Ancient Mariner, as Frank had dubbed him, came to life. He danced up and down on his deck, where two or three other figures of seamen now appeared. He shook his fist at the Nark.
“I’m outside the three-mile limit,” he screamed. “I’ll have the law on ye.”
“He means,” explained Captain Folsom to the boys, “that he is beyond the jurisdiction of United States waters and on the open sea.” 204
Nevertheless, the old skipper barked out an order, sailors sprang to obey, sails came down, and the schooner lay hove to. Then the Nark approached until only a boat’s length away. On the deck of the schooner, only the skipper stood. The seamen had gone below, their tasks completed.
“Look here, my man,” said Lieutenant Summers, “you may be outside the three-mile limit, but you are drawing the line pretty fine. What are your papers?”
The old skipper looked at him shrewdly, quizzically, from out his ambush of whiskers. A slow grin broke over his features.
“Ye know well as I we’m outside the three-mile limit,” he said. “So I don’t mind tellin’ ye. I got liquor aboard. But my papers is all clear, an’ ye can’t touch me. I’m from Nassau in the Bahamas for St. John. Two British possessions. An’ I’m on my course.”