Matt waited for no more. With a pounding heart he scrambled over boxes and casks and stove wood on his way toward the other hatch.
A confused babel of voices reached him from the cabin; feet could be heard running over the floor, and some one raised a great clatter dropping into the hold.
"Come out here!" shouted a fierce voice. "Come out, I say, or I'll shoot!"
Matt was willing to run the risk of stopping a bullet, there in the darkness, and he was in altogether too big a hurry to throw up a barricade between him and the man with the gun.
Rising on his knees, he lifted his hands to the hatch. No shot was heard, and Matt reflected that the scoundrels would not dare fire a revolver for fear of attracting attention from the other house boats in the cove.
To throw back the hatch took only an instant, but, as the young motorist scrambled through the opening, he was seized by the shoulders and hurled roughly to the deck.
He was up again almost as soon as he was down.
"Landers!" bellowed a gruff voice; "where the deuce is Landers? Take him, Kinky. I guess the two of us are enough without Landers. I'll head him off on this side."
Matt felt a pair of arms go around him from behind. With a fierce effort, however, he twisted clear of the clutching hands, whirled and struck out with his fist.
An exclamation, more forcible than polite, was jolted out of Kinky.