"Ay," Peter Gross answered soberly. "We'll fight to the end." He placed a hand on his protégé's shoulder.
"I shouldn't have brought you here, my lad," he said. There was anguish in his voice. "I should have thought of this—"
"I'll take my chances," Paddy interrupted gruffly, turning away. He dove into their tiny cubicle, a boxlike contrivance between decks, to secure rifles and cartridges. They carried revolvers. When he came up the sun was almost touching the rim of the horizon. The pursuing proa, he noticed had approached much nearer, almost within hailing distance.
"They don't intend to lose us in the dark," he remarked cheerfully.
"The moon rises early to-night," Peter Gross replied.
A few minutes later, as the sun was beginning to make its thunderclap tropic descent, the juragan, or captain of the proa issued a sharp order. The crew leaped to the ropes and began hauling in sail. Peter Gross swung his rifle to his shoulder and covered the navigator.
"Tell your crew to keep away from those sails," he said with deadly intentness.
The juragan hesitated a moment, glanced over his shoulder at the pursuing proa, and then reversed his orders. As the crew scrambled down they found themselves under Paddy's rifle.
"Get below, every man of you," Peter Gross barked in the lingua franca of the islands. "Repeat that order, juragan!"
The latter did so sullenly, and the crew dropped hastily below, apparently well content at keeping out of the impending hostilities.