But Jake was in no condition to throw another. It was a long time before he could get his breath; and when he did get it, the howls with which he awoke the echoes of the surrounding woods were wonderful to hear. The squatter’s family, believing that Jake had been mortally wounded, gathered about him with expressions of sympathy, and Joe Wayring took advantage of the confusion to climb into the skiff and put on his clothes. If there was going to be a fight he wanted to take a hand in it.
“Whoop!” shrieked the old woman, rolling up her sleeves and shaking a pair of huge, tan-colored fists at the object of her wrath. “If I was a man I’d swim off to that there boat an’ maul the last one of you. Matt, why don’t you do it? Seems like you was afeard of them fellers.”
“Yes, Matt, why don’t you do it?” said Arthur, encouragingly.
“Yes, Matt, show a little pluck,” chimed in Roy. “Come on. Swim off to us; and if I don’t sink you before you have got ten feet from the shore, I’m a Dutchman.”
“I don’t think we have any thing more to fear from them,” said Joe, in a low tone. “It’s a lucky thing for us that Roy thought of using those potatoes. If we had nothing to defend ourselves with they could drive us away from here very easily. Now let’s raise the canoe, and go up to the brook and catch our breakfast. I’m getting hungry.”
It was scarcely two minutes’ work to bring the wreck to the surface. It readily yielded to the strain that Joe and Arthur brought to bear upon the lines, and as soon as they could get hold of it, they drew it into the skiff stern foremost, thus compelling the water with which it was filled to run out at the hole in the bow. After that it was turned bottom upward over the stern locker and lashed fast. Of course Matt Coyle and his family had not been silent all this while. They had kept up a constant storm of threats and abuse, and the squatter fairly danced with rage when he saw the boat, with which he had expected to accomplish so much in the way of “independent guidin’” was lost to him forever. But they did not attempt any more violence, for Roy stood guard over his companions with a potato in each hand, and ready to open fire on them at any moment.
“Now, then!” exclaimed Joe, as he pulled up the anchor while the other boys shipped their oars, “do you want these provisions, or don’t you?”
“Course I want ’em,” growled Matt, in reply. “They’re mine, an’ we ain’t got no grub to eat.”
“All right. I don’t suppose that you have the shadow of a right to them, but we will give them up to you if you will do as we say.”
“Wal, I won’t do as you say, nuther,” declared Matt. “I ain’t goin’ to let myself be bossed around by no ’ristocrats, I bet you.”