“Come back here! Stop that boat! It’s ours! Stop or we’ll shoot!”
“Go ahead and shoot!” taunted Tom, hardly believing, after this delay, that they would go to this extreme. And they did not. Evidently their plan was to capture him alive.
Tom was so anxious to know whether or not his craft was keeping a sufficient distance in front of the other boat that he did not pay much attention to the course he was steering. The result was that, after he had swung out around a small island he was almost run down by a tug boat hauling some coal barges from one side of Lake Carlopa to the other.
Tom just had time to give the wheel a quick turn, and he fairly grazed one of the coal barges. This brought angry shouts from the captain of the tug who demanded to know:
“What in the name of thunderation are you trying to do, anyhow? Get yourself sunk? You soft-soaping landlubber, look where you’re going!”
Tom did not reply. He had half a notion to swing about, run up alongside the tug and appeal for help. Then a wild desire came into his mind to beat these men alone and single-handed if he could. It would be sportier that way.
As for his pursuers, when they saw the tug and barges they appeared to hesitate a moment, as if ready to give up the chase. But when they saw Tom keep on, they did the same, still chasing him.
For perhaps ten minutes more the chase was kept up. Tom could make out, by hasty observations over his stern, that three of the men were in consultation while the fourth one steered.
There now loomed up in front of Tom another island—a larger one than Barn Door, and he recognized it as the last one in this end of the lake before he could swing into the wider part of the water through which there was a straight course to Shopton.
“Once I get past there,” said Tom to himself, “I’m safe. They won’t dare chase me after that.”