“You putty mugged Yahoo!” he bawled out in a quarter-deck voice. “For the third and last time of askin’:—air you a-comin’ aboard? Speak now or remain forever silent.”
Not a word uttered the quiet, copper-colored figure amid the stern rigging.
“Ve-ry well, then,” growled the captain, and a muscular arm shot out and grabbed the astonished Indian by the scruff of the neck, “I’ll have to get you, my lad.”
With a strength which none of them had guessed the peppery little New Englander possessed, the captain fairly hove the uninvited passenger into the machine. The Indian offered no resistance. He appeared to think that he was irrevocably doomed to death, and that nothing he could do would save him from his fate.
When the captain had hauled him on board, he lay flat on his face in the bottom of the tonneau and uttered not a word.
“Get up thar, and act like a Christian,” exclaimed the captain angrily. “We ain’t goin’ to hurt you, you benighted monkey.”
“I’ll go down,” said Jack presently. “There’s a patch of swamp land yonder that will make a good landing place. We’ll put him ‘ashore’ there. I guess he can find his way home.”
“The only thing to do with him,” declared the captain. “Of all the ongrateful scaramouches ever I seed, he’s the wustest.”
Jack set the craft on a downward glide and came to earth on the edge of a patch of swampy land of some extent. The spot that he had selected for a landing was slightly higher than the rest and was comparatively dry. The big craft came down without a bump, and the pumps began sucking gas from the bag to render the machine less buoyant.
“Now then, you imp of the woods, git up on your hind legs and skeedaddle,” advised the captain, yanking the Indian to his feet.