“Not my boys,” said Tugg. “There are wild tribes about, as I told you. This bilin’ of trouble-makers are from up country. I’m dreadful afraid they’ve attacked the camp first and put the Professor and my boys out of the way. They must have been on the lookout for the Sea Spell. Had sentinels posted along shore. They want to loot her.”
“And it looks to me as though they’d do it,” I observed. “I never shot at a man, Captain; but I am going to begin shooting if those dancing dervishes start to come off to us in those big canoes I see there.”
“Don’t begin to shoot too quick, Mr. Webb,” said the Yankee skipper. “I reckon we’ll be able to handle them all right.”
“But your crew isn’t armed.”
“You bet they ain’t. And me with more than two thousand in gold aboard?” he snorted. “By the e-tar-nal snakes! I guess they ain’t armed. I wouldn’t trust ’em with firearms.”
I began to feel pretty bad. I knew they were a murderous looking lot of fellows; but I didn’t suppose that Tugg traveled in such peril all the time. I was learning a whole lot for a boy of my age. To be adventuring about the world “on the loose” as old Tom Anderly called it, had seemed a mighty fine thing. But just at that moment, with the schooner shaking on the shoal, the fires flaring on the beach, and the savages dancing and yelling at us, I would have given a good deal to have been where I could call a policeman!
But Adoniram Tugg showed no particular fear. I was the only person who had a weapon on deck. The Yankee skipper did not even go down for his own gun that hung over his stateroom door. Instead, he turned to Pedro and gave a quick command.
The mate and two of the sailors dashed for the forward hatch and had it off in a minute. Tugg turned to me again, drawling just the same as usual:
“Keep a thing seven year, they say, and it’s bound to come handy, no matter what it is. I bought a miscellaneous lot o’ truck out o’ a seaside store thar in Buenos Ayres because there was a right good chronometer went with the lot. Ah! that’s the box, Pedro. Rip it open—but have a care. Don’t bring fire near it—hey! you there with the cigaroot! Throw it away. You want to blow yourself to everylastin’ bliss?”
“They’re manning those canoes, Captain!” I shouted, for my attention was pretty closely fixed upon the savages.