“Not a bit of it, captain,” answered Dan cheerfully. “I’d do my best to plug you in some place where it wouldn’t really matter very much. But I’m not a dead-sure shot, you know, and I might make a mistake. Anyhow, there’s one thing certain”—and Dan’s voice rang out earnestly—“and that is that if you put your dirty old feet on this deck you’re going to get shot, I don’t know just where, and what’s more I don’t care. You might as well believe that.”
And the captain, looking at Dan’s flashing blue eyes and bristling red hair, somehow did believe it. He shook his fist in Dan’s face.
“I’ll get you yet, my boy!” he growled. “And when I do——”
Turning, he stumbled aft and disappeared into the deck house.
“He’s after a pistol!” warned Bob. “Everyone get to cover!”
Spencer tumbled helter-skelter down the steps, followed by Tom and Bob. But Dan held his ground, although his face paled.
On the Scout everybody seemed for a moment paralyzed. Then the tugboat captain turned and ran clumsily toward the deck-house door, and the sailor who had been holding the two boats together with a boat hook fixed around the after cleat of the launch dropped the haft and disappeared quickly around the other side of the cabin. Probably he thought he was too near the scene of action. Captain Sander must have known where to look for a weapon, for before the tugboat captain had reached the door he was back again with a formidable revolver in his hand and his face convulsed with passion.
“Stop that!” cried the captain of the tug. “You can’t shoot folks on my boat! You haven’t hired me for a warship!” And hurrying to the other, he seized the arm that held the revolver.
“Let go o’ me!” bellowed Captain Sauder.
“You give me my pistol and I will,” panted the other. There was a struggle, in which one sought to wrest away the weapon and the other to keep possession of it and throw off his adversary. Bob, viewing the conflict from the cabin doorway, called to Dan.