The men on the Three Sisters dropped their rifles and stared in silence, with mouths agape. It was a voice and a vision from the dead. "Black Sam" and his wreckers stood poised in their various threatening attitudes as if petrified. It was a strange tableau. If Dan had hopped off a passing cloud he could not have caused a more breathless sensation. The spell which his appearance cast on all who beheld him was broken by the jubilant voice of Captain Jim:
"It's Dan Frazier sure enough. Thank God you're alive and kicking, boy. Captain Bruce reported you drowned, and nobody's dared to tell your mother till I could get out to the wreck. Hold your nerve. We're coming after you."
The words awoke "Black Sam" Hurley to swift action. He was beside himself with rage at the boy on the steamer's bridge who had spoiled the explosion and then made a jest of his claims as wrecking-master. The desperate negro had only one idea in his head—to square matters by getting his hands on Dan. He ran toward the bridge with several of his men at his heels, and Dan hastily climbed on the rail ready to jump overboard as the only way of escape. But before the wreckers had gained his refuge, he heard Captain Jim cry:
"Hold on, Dan. Don't jump. Duck and lie flat where you are."
The boy flopped full length on the bridge an instant before several rifles barked on the Three Sisters and bullets came singing over the Kenilworth. The wreckers halted, huddled in confusion, and ran for the shelter of the nearest deck-house. "Black Sam" delayed to hurl an iron belaying-pin at Dan's head and paid dearly for the act. It was Bill McKnight who drove a bullet through his arm and made him fly for cover with blood trickling from his fingers. Then the clarion tones of the fat chief engineer sounded across the water as if he had taken full command of the expedition:
"Half a dozen of you men stay here to sweep the Kenilworth's bulwarks with your guns and give us a chance to climb over. The rest follow me to board her. A la machete! Out cutlasses. Viva Cuba! Hip, hip, hooroo!"
Two boats were fairly thrown into the water from the Three Sisters and the cheering Resolutes fell into them, grabbing capstan bars and coal shovels, or clubbing their rifles. The Bahama wreckers had no intention of being driven from their prize without making a fight for it. Several of them pulled revolvers from inside their shirts and popped wildly away at the approaching boats while "Black Sam" led a crowd of his followers behind the tall bulwark where they crouched, sheltered from rifle fire, and ready to receive the boarders as they came over the side. Captain Jim was in the bow of one boat, the chief engineer in the other. The wreckers had been unable to cut away the dangling boat ropes and bowlines by which they had climbed on board, and the attacking party ascended like so many acrobats. Bill McKnight was boosted and hauled part way, but as soon as he found a secure purchase for his fingers and toes, he dove over the bulwark like a landslide and pranced into action like a cyclone.
It was a pretty bit of old-fashioned boarding for the prosaic twentieth century. The Resolutes suffered some cracked heads and bloody faces before they gained foothold and swept forward. Try as he would, Captain Jim could not keep the terrific pace set by Bill McKnight who was swinging his rifle like a flail and clearing a wide path while he grunted maledictions at the foe.
