“Get the rockets!” panted Mr. Neale, tearing back along the trail, “the cutter won’t know what’s happened. Send up rockets!”
Brownie dashed back with him, and while Mr. Neale was fumbling to set the rockets, and dropping a packet of matches into the water in his helpless eagerness, Brownie was tugging at the light dory with all his strength, trying to shove it over the rimrock into the shoals at the head of the Shark; his idea was to row down after the vessel and so to be on hand if any help could be rendered. Mr. Neale had to ask for matches; but finally the fuses hissed and rockets roared up from the heavy roots into which their sticks had been thrust, to break into puffs of white, heavy smoke—the warning of attack!
On the Libertad a hasty conference was held. Nicky was not invited to attend the conferees, but was bound quickly and thrown unceremoniously into a corner of the cabin floor, to await their further need for his protecting body.
Whispers, gruff laughs, sharp negatives to suggested action, were all that Nicky could catch. Finally, however, he heard Don Ortiga order the engineer to put on full speed astern, and back went the white boat down the Shark, a man at her stem to call the channel to the tillerman.
“We’ll use him as a blind, say he’s been hurt and we want to deliver him up,” Nicky overheard a man confide to the engineer who was necessarily absent from the conference. “That will hold their fire.”
“Whose fire?” asked the engineer, wiping gasoline from the lower edge of the carbureter, which seemed to be leaking.
“The cutter must be laying outside,” the sailor declared. “One man on the shore was in uniform. They must have tried to surround us. Lucky for us, the lad fell into our hands!”
“Yes,” said the engineer coarsely laughing. “If they offer to hurt us we can shoot him—or whatever we like!”
At the head of the Shark River Mr. Neale was helping with the dory; its keel grated and rubbed, offering resistance. They lifted and bumped it along until it seemed safe to leap in; but the added weight plumped it down onto the coral again and they had to tumble out and push once more. Then Mr. Neale leaped in, Brownie gave a shove and fell onto the stern on his chest, and clambered aboard. They caught the oars and gave way with insane eagerness.
On the Libertad Nicky lay in his corner.