"What?" exclaimed Barlow.
"I say I've got one, and he is now bound and gagged in a boat under a wharf a little ways from here," repeated Joe. "It's Watson; and I tell you I wouldn't make a prisoner of him again for four times fifty dollars. I hit him a blow right behind the ear, and he fell as if he had been shot."
"And in broad daylight, too?" said Barlow, who was utterly confounded. "Are you sure no one saw you?"
"As sartin as I can be. I kept a watch out for Bob, for fear that he would come back, but he never came. Now, you want to go down there and be ready to take him off to the vessel."
Joe went one way and Barlow the other—Joe to walk around and get over some of his excitement, and Barlow to hunt up his barkeeper and get him to attend to the saloon during his absence, and in a few minutes he was making good time toward the wharf. Samson was mad about it. He fully expected to give the unconscious Watson "a whack or two" in payment for the drubbing he had administered a day before, and he didn't like the idea of having him captured by anybody else. He came into the saloon and looked all around for Joe, but he had gone.
Barlow went under the wharf, and there he found the boat with a tarpaulin spread out in the bow. He lifted it, and underneath lay Ben, so white and still that Barlow began to think he was dead.
"You know too much for me," said he, grimly. "I guess if you are out of the way for a year or two I will stand a chance of making some money. I'll teach you to punch my barkeeper up, as you did yesterday."
Everything depended on getting Ben aboard the vessel before he came to, and Barlow lost no time in going about it. He replaced the tarpaulin again, backed the boat out from under the wharf, and pulled down the middle of the harbor to reach the ship, which was anchored a short distance from shore, waiting for the tide to turn. But Barlow knew that the tide had little to do with the ship's movements. She had a crew, ready to sail, with the exception of two men, and the captain, being anxious to keep them, resolved to put a little clear water between him and the shore. They couldn't desert without being seen by somebody.
Barlow put out all his strength on the oars, and at the end of half an hour ran his boat under the vessel's bow, where he laid hold of a bobstay and waited for some one to hail him. He was not obliged to wait long, for in a few minutes the first mate stuck his head over the rail.
"Halloo, Barlow! What have you got there?" he asked.