“Sam—sick,” Mr. Neale said to the cutter’s officer, “but we left him on the way to Jamaica the afternoon before the squall. How did these men get on his boat?—and——”
“And why are they bound Eastward along the coast when he ought to be nearly to Jamaica by now—here, heave to!”
The sail came down with a run—the men were careless sloopmen or very ignorant of a single-masted boat and her handling. The cutter swung in a circle and ranged up beside the sloop.
It was practically dark, for the twilight is short in the season, and the men sat with their heads well covered. But if this was a ruse to escape detection of their identity it failed. Lieutenant Sommerlee motioned to a patrol member, and the man caught the rail of the Treasure Belle and clung so that the boats lay sides-to.
The lieutenant stepped across the rails, and made his way to the cabin. At the same instant the two men stood up, but before they could carry out their intention—which might have been to plunge over the side and take chances of swimming away and escaping in the dark—the young officer had his pistol trained, drawing it as he whirled.
“Throw up your hands!” he snapped, “and sit down again!”
“Sam,” called Mr. Neale, clambering into the cockpit of his old sloop, “where are you?”
“Ain’t no one there,” said one of the men. “Lieutenant, will you promise us a fair break if we tell you the truth?”
“Yellow-livered, of course,” he said. “I guessed you would try that.” He went close, called for a flashlight and trained it on the two anxious sailors. “Ho! You—‘Runty’—you, too—‘Jack O’ the Keys.’ What are you doing in this sloop? Where is Sam—but I may as well tell you that you are under arrest right now, and if you expect any leniency, which I won’t promise at this moment, you had better say what’s on your minds.”
Then they told him. He, and Clarence Neale, learned of the escape of the Senorita, as well as of Nelse’s part in that, and in the hi-jacker’s plans, in which Nelse figured as a receiver for their stolen cargoes, since he owned Crocodile Key; they also learned of the wreck, of the boys’ ruse, and escape, and of the latest escapade, as far as the men knew it.