“Vell, schmokin’ is goot and magazine is goot bud dey don’d mix, ain’d it?” commented the German skipper sententiously as he shuffled back to his bunk. He was simply the hired navigator of the gunboat and, so long as the boys didn’t blow his ship up, he had no further interest in their movements.
The boys had carried perhaps their fiftieth case of rifle shells to the deck and piled them there, preparatory to taking them ashore, when their attention was attracted by evidence that the coming fight that Ruiz had prophesied was already on. From where they stood they could catch the flashes of the machine-guns on the hill and hear distinctly the rattle of rifles which accompanied their steady cough.
“Come on, Frank,” said Harry, as the sounds were borne to their ears; “we’ve no time to loaf now. They may need this stuff urgently this minute. Come on; we’ll take what we’ve got here and get ashore with it.”
Several of the sailors who had come from below on the news that there was fighting going on ashore gave them a hand to load the cases in the boat and it was not very long before they were ready to cast off.
They rowed landward almost in silence watching between strokes the phosphorescent gleams where the fins of the man-eaters cut about the water on all sides.
“They’d find our cargo pretty indigestible;” laughed Frank, as one monster, whose form showed flaming green in the depths alongside, dashed by with hungry, gaping jaws and dived beneath the boat after darting a glance at the boys out of his little pig-like eyes.
They had marked the location of the landing-place by a tall ceiba tree, which formed an excellent landmark, before they left shore; so that they had no trouble in picking up the spot in the mangroves where the boats lay snugly hidden. As their boat’s nose grated in amongst the twisted roots, Frank sprang quickly out and made fast the painter and then Harry began the work of handing the ammunition ashore.
“Ruiz will have to send down some men to carry this stuff up into camp,” remarked Harry, puffing under his exertions, which, as each case weighed about fifty pounds, were not inconsiderable.
“And here they come, now;” rejoined Frank, as there was a trampling in the mangroves at the back of them. Both boys looked up to greet the newcomers and tell them how to lay hold of the boxes, when a startling thing happened.
The new arrivals came forward steadily and halted in a line, and, as if moved by clockwork, a dozen rifles went up to as many shoulders, covering the boys, whose hands dropped to their sides in sheer amazement at this unexpected turn of affairs.