"But it was you that lured us aboard the Santa Maria! And it was you that threw Motor Matt off the steamer! Why shouldn't we use guns when we saw you coming for us? You're a lawless scoundrel, and if you had what was coming you'd be swinging from the yardarm of a man-o'-war! I wish there was a Yankee fighting ship in these waters! You'd have short shrift to your deserts, Captain Jim Sixty!"
"It's easy enough to blow," scowled Sixty, "but your talk don't amount to nothin'. I'm on my own deck, and that makes me high cockalorum. Drop that gun, I tell you, before we lay you on the deck alongside your mate."
"Drop me on the deck!" shouted Dick, recklessly. "Keep up your lawlessness, if you dare!"
Dick swerved his eyes a little to get a fleeting glance of the nine men who had boarded the wreck with Sixty.
"What sort of swabs are you?" he cried. "Don't you know the risk you are taking in doing the dirty work for a ruffian like Sixty? He abandoned the brig—left her to her fate—and now the rest of you can pick him up and slant away. I'll stay here with my mate, and take care of him, but we'll neither of us set a foot on your pirate schooner!"
Dick was so wrought up that he would have defied an army if one had been mustered against him. He was hopelessly outnumbered, and there could have been but one result had events been allowed to take their course.
But the unexpected happened, and it happened just then when the brave Ferral, standing over the form of his unconscious chum, was defying Sixty and his men to do their worst.
"Ahoy, the brig!"
The faint hail came from the schooner.
"Ahoy!" roared Sixty, turning and making a trumpet of his hands.