“We want that silver casket. Are you going to give it up peaceably, or do we have to blow your vessel out of the water?”
“You infernal scoundrels!” shouted Andrews, before Jack could check him.
The captain bounded forward to a machine gun. With quick, nervous fingers he was ripping off its cover when Jack laid a hand on his arm.
“Hold on a minute, captain,” he said, “I’ve another plan. We shall know in a few seconds now if it will succeed.”
The captain looked at him wonderingly.
“They outnumber and outarm us,” he began. But Jack broke in:
“I’ve an idea that one of those chests in my father’s cabin contains some novel weapons,” he said, “a new kind of gun, the invention of Tom and myself. They contain a magazine of shells loaded with a gas which will paralyze any form of animal life with which they come in contact.”
The captain gasped.
“Well,” he said, “I’d heard that you kids were inventive wonders, but this——”
“Oh, we didn’t invent the gas,” interposed Tom, who had been an interested listener to Jack’s last words, “Professor Chadwick did that. But we applied it to use in the guns.”