Tew and the sailor held a short conference. At Tew’s gesture the sailor poised the oars, while Tew tugged at a weapon in his belt. Tom leaped up onto the cabin roof, to have a better place from which to pretend to cover the sailor, but an inspiration came to him and he acted upon that instead.
Pretending to glance by accident toward the larger expanse of the open Gulf he dropped the rifle, and waved his arm, then dragged out a handkerchief and waved that wildly.
“Here she comes!” he shouted. “Cutter—ahoy!”
With a common fear Tew snatched up a second pair of oars as the sailor, with a mighty heave on one oar, began to swing his tender in a circle; then both began to row away around the islet with all their strength, while Nicky and Tom, seeing Cliff’s deception, and knowing that it had succeeded because the men thought they could see from the cabin top what was invisible on the water line, leaped up beside their comrade and began to hail and to wave their arms.
The tender was quickly out of their sight, and yet they kept up their shouting, until, at a sign from Cliff, they desisted.
“Well, that’s over—for the time!” Cliff said thankfully.
“But we’re worse off than ever,” Tom added. “They’ll watch——”
“No they won’t!” Nicky argued. “They’ll hide. We are not so badly off. We can load the guns and if we have to we can shoot over their heads when they come back after us!”
“But they have guns, too,” objected Cliff.
“Well,” Nicky proposed, “let’s fix the cabin so we can take refuge there, barricade it. There’s all the food for a long siege, and we can command the doors from those portholes.”