Phil smiled grimly.
“Almost his very words,” he said.
“Well,” Steve fingered his trusty revolver, resolutely, “I have an idea he won’t find it quite as easy as he thinks for. We’ll give him a good fight for his money anyway.”
“For our money, you mean,” corrected Tom with a grin.
“I was a fool to think we had seen the last of that scoundrel, Ramirez,” said Jack Benton, moodily. “The smell of gold to that kind of scum is like raw meat to a pack of wolves. Of course it was he that shadowed us in San Domingo. On the strength of his story of treasure, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to gather about him a band of desperate men, ready for any illegitimate adventure. They have chartered some sort of ship and followed us here. Simplest thing in the world.”
“You bet,” agreed Phil. “And now they think they have everything their own way. They know now certainly there is a treasure and though they know it is temporarily in our possession—”
“Temporarily—say, where do you get that stuff?” demanded Steve indignantly. “You don’t suppose they’ve got a chance in the world of getting that gold away from us, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Phil, adding soberly. “But it won’t do for us to forget for a minute, that they are twenty against our six.”
“Five and a half, you mean,” said Tom with a grin as he thought of Bimbo. “I imagine old Bimbo—” But Phil sent him a warning glance as the black boy himself appeared in the door to announce that “breffus done been prepared dis long time. Done nobody else wanna eat it Ah will, yassir, Ah’s one hungry nigger!”
Phil insisted on keeping watch while the other boys ate and no amount of argument could move him from his stand. However, Dick hastily finished his breakfast and relieved the famished Phil.