"Yeou, Corny!" The Missus gave swift command aft. "Call all hands aft an' tell Mr. Leman to fetch the rifles. Lively yeou!"
Meantime, she was bringing Pontifex aboard, manifestly against his will, as the signal-line testified. Dennis kicked out of the rubber suit, getting clear just as Bo's'n Joe came up the companion way. A moment later both Leman and Corny appeared, each with an armload of rifles interspersed with shot-guns.
"Strike me blind!" exclaimed Ericksen, pausing beside Dennis, and listening intently. "If it ain't them Japs—a schooner, likely, beatin' up for the island under power, and all hands too lazy to take in sail! Aye, that's them."
"But it may be someone else," said Dennis. "A fisherman, perhaps."
Bo's'n Joe gave him a look of pitying scorn from his uptwisted eye. "You wait an' see!"
Rifles were served out to all aboard, Dennis among the rest, and by the time Captain Pontifex was up and out of his suit, the ship was ready for defence. Pontifex heard the news without comment; a rifle under his arm, he dispatched Corny to the crosstrees to keep watch from there, and ordered Mr. Leman to stand by with a megaphone.
"Growin' closer, sir," volunteered Ericksen. "Takin' soundings, she is."
The skipper nodded. The fog-muffled thrum of an engine was now distinctly perceptible, while the slatting of sails told that the approaching craft was not far off. The fog was thick and steady without a breath of wind to thin it out.
"All right, Mr. Leman," said Pontifex suddenly. "Let 'em have it."
Instantly the stentorian tones of Mr. Leman, intensified a thousandfold by the megaphone, blared out upon the fog.