A moment afterwards Croft and the French Anarchist were seen to raise their guns to the shoulder. A flash followed, and Warner was grazed by something on the forehead, while Tom had been hit in the leg. And the rattle on the wicker basket-work of the car indicated that they had been fired at with slugs.
“I say this is getting a little too hot, Mr Goodall,” cried Trigger. “Look, sir, at that French villain climbing up to cut away our grapnel.”
“Shall I fetch him down with my bull-dog?” asked Warner.
“I thought you wanted to take him alive?”
“That’s true, sir, but another fellow wants to cut us adrift, and I shall lose them altogether.”
But Trigger’s blood was up, and before his master could restrain him he had fired, and immediately a man was seen to slip down the rattlings.
“I’ve dusted him in the stern sheets, anyway.”
“Yes, you’ve marked him, Trigger, but I hope not seriously.”
Then an excited conversation took place between the skipper and the wounded man, but the aeronauts could not hear the actual words. But whatever they were, their effect was that the little Anarchist dropped some package overboard, and then, picking himself up, he retreated with Croft behind an improvised barricade of cases which were on the fore-deck of the lugger, while the skipper and his crew grouped themselves astern, evidently as non-belligerents.
Then Harry Goodall called on the skipper to surrender Croft, but, to the aeronaut’s surprise, the skipper made no reply. Thereupon Warner prepared for further action, while Trigger popped into Bennet’s double-barrelled breach-loader two more cartridges of No. 8 shot.