“I’ll jest tell you what’s a fact, Pete,” said he. “You whacked him too hard.”
“No, I reckon not,” answered the other. “Ketch hold of him, and we’ll souse him in the water and bring him to life again. Them thousand dollars are our’n.”
Barr was a coward as well as a professional lawbreaker, and if he had been alone he would have fled at the top of his speed, leaving Don to recover or to remain insensible, as the fates might decree; but Peter wasn’t that sort. Barr had told him of the money that Lester Brigham was willing to give to any one who would send Don so far out of the country that he would never come back again; and Pete didn’t see why they should not earn it, now that it was in their power to do so. In accordance with his suggestion, Barr took hold of one foot while Pete held fast to the other, and by their united efforts, Don was pushed out of the path and churned up and down in the cold water, until he began to show signs of returning consciousness. Then he was hauled up again, feet first, Pete threw him over his shoulder as if he had been an infant, and the worthy pair retraced their steps toward the beach.
Don had a dim idea of what was going on, but he was powerless to resist. His head felt as if it were about to burst, his strength was all gone; but in courage he was as undaunted as ever. He knew when he was put into Barr’s canoe and taken off to the sloop, which lay at anchor a short distance from the shore; and he heard, as in a dream, his abductors talk about shipping him off for Cuba on a coaster that was to sail from Havre de Grace that night; but for reasons of their own, which Don could not understand, owing to the fuddled state of his brain, they were going to make Brigham believe that they had sent him off to China. This gave the prisoner a vague idea that he was the victim of a plot, but he did not try to get at the bottom of it. On the contrary, he fell asleep while his captors were lifting him over the side of the sloop.
When Don awoke it was dark, and he was lying on a rough bunk in the sloop’s cabin. Barr was standing at the top of the companion-ladder in such a position that he could keep an eye on Don, and at the same time listen to the conversation that was carried on between Pete and a man whom Don could not see.
“It’s a business that I don’t like to meddle with,” Don heard the invisible man say.
“’Tain’t no wuss than other things that you’ve done more’n a hundred times,” answered Pete. “He’s a teetotal stranger in these parts, and not one of his friends knows where he is. You can sign the articles for him, and sw’ar that he was shipped all squ’ar and reg’lar, can’t you? If you don’t want to bring him back from Havanny, why, you needn’t to.”
“But my bunks in the forecastle are all full,” said the voice. “Where can I stow him?”
“Put him in the cabin till you call him up for duty, and arterwards let him stow himself o’ nights,” said Pete. “If you don’t do it, who’ll ketch your cigars for this trip?”
“Well, I suppose I shall have to do it,” replied the voice, which belonged to the captain of a coaster, who now and then turned a penny in the line of smuggling. “Bring him aboard.”