Making the Ghost fast to the sloop, Charley climbed on board the latter, and quickly explained to the three men who were on deck how it happened that they were sailing about the bay at two o'clock in the morning.
"So it was you that was firing, was it?" said the captain of the sloop. "Well, now, I want to know! Fired a cannon right slap into 'em, did ye? Well, now, that beats me."
"It beat them too," remarked Joe.
"You didn't kill none of 'em, did ye?"
"No, and I don't think we hurt anybody very much; but we knocked a hole in their boat," said Charley.
"Hope you did. They won't drown, for they're regular wharf rats; but the sheriff'll catch 'em on the meadows to-morrow. How big a ball does that gun of yourn carry?"
"We hadn't any balls, so we fired a lot of nails wrapped up in a handkerchief at them. I shouldn't have thought the nails would have held together, but they did, and I know there was a hole knocked in the boat by the way the men acted."
"They're the same fellows that stole Sam Harris's cat-boat last week; but I guess they won't steal no more—not for the present."
The oystermen who had been awakened by the cannon, and had supposed that it was fired by some steamer that had run ashore on the beach, were now ready to turn in again. The captain of the sloop told the boys to lower their sails, and to make the yacht fast to the sloop's stern.
"You won't be troubled no more to-night, and we'll tow you over to Amityville to-morrow morning, if you want to go there," said the captain. "But you'd better go to sleep, now. There'll be somebody on the look-out on board the sloop, so you needn't be afraid of nothing."