"Don't be too quick on the shoot," warned the Blixton policeman, who still had his own revolver in his hand. "This is a police party, and you're under arrest. Start any shooting trouble, and the air will be full of it."
"Clear out, and I'll come outside and talk with you," proposed Evarts, for it really was the discharged foreman.
"All right," nodded the policeman. "Gentlemen, let him step outside."
The others left the entrance to the cabin, As Evarts, his pistol now back in his pocket, stepped sullenly outside, Harry Hazelton dropped back into the doorway.
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Evarts," grinned the police officer, deftly slipping handcuffs on the fellow's wrists.
"This is treachery!" stormed the prisoner. "I didn't surrender to you.
I only came out to talk with you."
"If you didn't surrender, then excuse me, and go ahead and put up a fight," laughed the policeman, handily removing Evarts's revolver from a hip pocket.
"Now, look in here, Tom," urged Dick. "Do you see what caught my eye?"
Prescott pointed to a sharp-nosed cylinder, some eight feet long. Just as it lay the propeller at the other end was invisible to one at the doorway of the cabin.
"It's a home-made imitation of a Whitehead torpedo," Lieutenant Dick went on, in explanation. "If it proves to be charged with explosives then the mere having of it aboard this sloop will prove embarrassing to these two prisoners to explain in court. If it isn't loaded, that will be almost as bad, as such a torpedo can be rather easily loaded, and then set in operation by clock-work machinery that will control the propeller."