CHAPTER IX.
ONE AGAINST SEVEN.
No sooner had Nick Carter announced his intention than he saw it impressed the men in front of him.
The dread of the sharpshooter is proverbial. When a man knows he may possibly be the next target for a man who shoots straight, and that the marksman will go[Pg 32] after one man, and one only, it takes much of the fire of battle out of him, unless he is of phenomenal courage.
In this critical situation, the detective had hit upon a shrewd course.
It was much better than making a rush, blazing away indiscriminately. Now each of the seven men facing him wondered if he might be the one to be shot first.
That ugly-looking automatic pistol, with a number of cartridges ready to be sent flying at the enemy, was calculated to disturb the equanimity of any ordinary person.
There was a nervous shifting of feet among the sailors, and the detective’s jaw set firmly as he saw that his bluff was likely to be effective. It was hardly a bluff, either, for he and Mike Corrigan would both shoot on the instant if there were any move by the enemy. Moreover, each had picked out two men.
If Kennedy had not been unusually quick-witted, and if the sailors had not had a respect and love for the owner of the yacht, Mademoiselle Valeria—known in the Hotel Amsterdam as the Baroness Latour—which amounted to worship, it is likely that Nick Carter would have had things all his own way.
But Kennedy knew his men, and he was aware of the fact that a reminder of the young woman by whom they had been employed in many shady transactions in the past, and who had always paid them well, would make them forget pretty nearly everything else.
Quick action was imperative.