"Oh Zeke, they have hit you," exclaimed Enoch.
"Don't I know that?" replied the wheelman, who stuck to his work as though there was nothing the matter with him. "But as long as they do not get me down I am going to stand up. Do you see that man alongside the schooner's wheel? Well he is the one that shot me."
Enoch took just one glance at the schooner and saw that the man referred to had just loaded his pistol and was now engaged in priming it. He cast frequent glances toward Zeke and grinned at him the while as if to tell him that his second shot would go to the mark; but he did not take notice of Enoch who, kneeling down behind the rail, brought his gun to bear on him. It spoke almost immediately, and the man dropped his pistol, turned part way around and sank down lifeless where he stood.
"There!" exclaimed Zeke. "That was a good shot. Now see if you can get that man at the wheel. That will leave her without any guiding hand, and before she can bring another man to helm I may be able to come up with her."
"I was sent here for that purpose," said Enoch, rolling over on his back and reaching for his powder-horn. "I am going to pick off every man they send there."
In a few minutes the gun was ready, after trying in vain to retain his hold of the spokes, the steersman went down in a heap. Of course the schooner came into the wind, and Zeke uttered a yell as she veered round broadside to the sloop; and in a moment more there was a rush of men from the deck and Enoch and Zeke were standing alone.
"Boarders away!" shouted Captain O'Brien, as he made the two vessels fast together. "Now, boys, show what you're are made of."
Zeke released his hold of the wheel, and caught up his club which stood beside him where he could get his hands upon it at a moment's warning; he cleared the rails of the vessels without using his hands, and Enoch lost sight of him in the fracas. Somehow, Enoch could not have told how it happened, he was close at his heels when he reached the schooner's deck, and between using his gun as a club to fell a man to the deck and making use of it as a parry to ward off a blow that somebody aimed at his head, he did not know anything more until he heard a voice exclaim in piteous accents:
"I surrender! I surrender!"
"Who is that?" shouted Captain O'Brien. "Do you all surrender? If you do, throw down your weapons."