"Well, we seen your signal and that's what we've come to do, so why in thunder are you pullin' them guns on us?"
"You can't fool me, Old Cut-and-slash!" answered Dick. "That telegram of yours that my mate got in the hotel, by mistake, didn't give the position of this brig, did it? 'No wind and no drift.' That's what the telegram said. But that storm, the other night, blew her quite a distance across the gulf. You didn't take the Santa Maria in order to get close to this wreck and give it a sizing, did you?"
A perfect roar went up from Sixty.
"I knowed you was next to my game all the time," he whooped, irefully. "I wish I could have chucked you into the drink along with Motor Matt. Confound that blasted submarine! If she hadn't come snoopin' along after us, Motor Matt wouldn't be where he could bother me none."
For a thorough-going scoundrel, Sixty was peculiarly artless in letting out facts of importance. This was the first intimation Carl and Dick had had that Sixty was in any way concerned with Matt's going overboard. The revelation took them both aback.
"You heaved our old raggie over the rail, did you?" demanded Dick, angrily.
"Yes," shouted Sixty furiously, shaking a fist in the direction of the brig, "and I have been hoping that storm had cooked your goose. I've been lookin' for the brig in that schooner, following on acrost the gulf in the way the wind must have drove her from the bearin's given me in that telegram. I allowed you chaps knowed more about my business than I wanted you to."
"We know you've got a cargo of arms and ammunition on the brig that's not down in the manifest."
Sixty yelled a frantic oath.
"Put down them guns," he bellowed. "We're comin' aboard."