“But what is to prevent our winging all hands of your party before we’re starved?” Ned cried. “We are justified in shooting to kill, for you have shown yourselves to be pirates, and we shan’t give in without a struggle. Watch your chance!” he added in a whisper to Roy. “We’ve got to shoot them down or else go under ourselves.”
“You won’t crow so loud to-morrow,” Manuel shouted, and then the sound of halting footsteps told that he had gone forward once more.
“You are shivering like a fellow with a chill,” Vance said to Roy.
“So would you if you had gotten us into the scrape that I have. It seems as if I had doomed all three to death.”
“You mustn’t give way like that,” Ned said sharply, “or there will be very little hope for us. Vance, you take the revolver until Roy pulls himself together, for just now I don’t believe he could hit the side of a barn.”
“Is this all we are to do—stand here for them to sneak up and shoot us whenever they feel like it?” Vance asked as he obeyed the order.
“Not by any manner of means, an’ it won’t pay to remain in this spot very long, for they can fire at us from the engine-room. I’ll go into one of the state-rooms, and you take the other. By leaving the doors open it will be possible to keep watch on the skylights, and that is the most dangerous point just now.”
Vance made his way quickly into the room on the starboard side, fastening the door open with a chair lest the motion of the craft should close it, and Ned went into the apartment opposite, Roy following him.
Not until this had been done was it learned that the stock of cartridges was yet in the locker, and it was necessary they be divided before Manuel should have attended to his wound and returned to watch for a chance to shoot one of the prisoners.
Ned darted out very swiftly, knowing he stood a poor show of returning if one of the pirates caught a glimpse of him, and in a very short time both the watchers were well supplied with ammunition.