"Take my line or I'll blow a few holes in you, and while you're on your way to the bottom of the straits—all hands of you—I'll ram you to make sure."
"You're foolish to sink us," I says, "till you take off the ambergris and the sealskins."
He began to get mad. "Take my line or take a shell from this gun. Which is it?" he yells.
His gun was trained on our midship topsides. I couldn't see where he was going to sink us, leastwise not with one shot, so, "Come aboard with your shell!" I called out, and he did. I didn't look to see what damage the shell did in passing, but it went clear through our pine topsides one side and out the other.
I'd already passed the word to my mate, and wh-r-oo! went the four-and-a-half-foot bomb-lance from the inside of one of our make-believe seven-inch rifles. The lance tore through just above the water-line of Red Dick's steamer. The bomb exploded inside her hull. Through the hold the sea rushed, and from her deck below came whoops of surprise.
I rolled the little fat Svend Foyn around. She near capsized in turning, especially as Red Dick let me have two more from his needle-gun while we were coming around. One of them burst inside, but didn't kill anybody. Around came the Svend Foyn.
"Her water-line!" I yelled, and we let her have it. And again we gave it to her. They both went home.
Red Dick quit laughing. He ran down from the bridge and out of sight below. Pretty soon, through her sides, as we hear him and his gang yelling, came the ends of blankets and mattresses, to keep the sea out of the holes we'd made.
And while they are at that we give them another. And that settled it. Five minutes before, I had an idea we might have to go to the bottom—s-sst! like that. And now Red Dick and his cargo steamer were belting through the tide rips toward the Terra del Fuego shore, to find a bay, I suppose, and a bit of a beach to haul up and patch things. And I couldn't help thinking as he went that he'd lost a desperate reputation about as easy as any ever I heard of; but I might as well also say now that I'd been shipmates with Red Dick, and I always did believe he was a good deal of a bluff. But my crew didn't think that. There was great rejoicing among them, and I let them rejoice so long as they didn't stop setting things to rights.
We were shook up some—our bridge loosened up, our wireless hoops hanging droopy, our two fake smoke-stacks lying over on their sides, and the for'ard turret with some dents in it; but bow first, and in peace and quiet, we steamed on. And we were still steaming in peace and quiet when we made Punta Arenas.