“And then, sir, this man saw what I had been up to and threatened to kill me if I told.”
“A threat, I believe, he is perfectly capable of carrying out. Don’t move there, you,” to the fireman. “I see it all now. That struggle on the dock was a blind to keep the watchman’s attention attracted while the smugglers got that stuff out of the bunkers. Ready, you’ve foiled a clever plot.”
More shots came from below.
“It’s the police, sir!” exclaimed Jack, “and I guess they’ve come in time.”
Just then a police sergeant appeared on the upper deck. He had come on board from the dock, having been summoned with a file of men by the old watchman. He looked astonished, as well he might, at the picture before him: a white-faced, shaking boy, a sullen, whipped cur of a fireman and a stalwart seaman covering the man with a revolver. From below, where the police were rounding up the smugglers, who put up a desperate resistance, also came sounds of conflict.
“Sergeant, if you’ll handcuff this man, I’ll explain all this in a brace of shakes,” said the captain. He speedily did so to the officer’s satisfaction, and the malefactor was led off, after Jack had promised to appear against him in the morning when the case came up in court.
As for the gang in the boats, they, too, were rounded up after several shots had been exchanged without bloodshed. Jack was warmly congratulated by the police, and it was late before he was able to slip off home to the schooner.
He found his uncle anxiously waiting up for him, and Jack told his story with as little melodrama in it as he could. But his throat was rapidly turning black and blue where his assailant had grasped him, and his uncle would not hear of the lad’s turning in till it had been anointed with Captain Ready’s “Bruise Balm and Sore Soother.”