“You can’t do it,” Frank Whispered. “You are not well yet. Suppose you let me try?”
“Not in a hundred years!” chuckled Jule. “I guess you don’t know I’m the champion under-water swimmer of Chicago! I’ll be inside the boat in no time, and then there will be doings. I’ll show my devil face to the bushmen and let the dog out, and there won’t be anything to it. Perhaps I’d better make a devil dog out of Captain Joe!”
“Try it, and he’ll eat you up!” cried Case. “Don’t be foolish.”
“The sulphur will wash off,” warned Frank.
“Water will only make it all the brighter,” insisted Jule. “Now watch me go to it! When I get in, you boys come. Will you? All right! Now here goes for a swim! Be sure and keep well under water when you come!”
There was a slight splash in the creek, and Jule was out of sight.
CHAPTER XIV.—A BATTLE FOR THE BOAT
Case had expressed the situation exactly in answering Frank’s question as to why the boys did not go into the cabin and release Captain Joe. The prow light cast a circle of illumination over the forward deck and also over the water between the prow and the shore.
Anyone stepping into that circle would simply be a mark for the bullets of his enemies. The only way in which the boat could be safely entered, with the bushmen and the boys watching each other, would be to shoot out the light and make a rush for it.
This Clay did not care to do, for he had hope that the boys back in the forest might in time come to his assistance. He had understood from the few words spoken in his hearing by the intruders that Case and Frank had been attacked by the fellows, but he did not know the exact situation, of course. And even if Case and Frank were in as great need of help as he himself was, there was still Jule—resourceful, courageous, and quite likely to turn up in the most unexpected place at the right time.