O’Neil instinctively had swung his bow around and headed the boats out from the land now only a few hundred yards distant.
Phil saw there were four men on the boat, but his eyes fell with pleasure on the boxes.
“Do you surrender?” Phil shouted fiercely to the man at the wheel, only five feet away from him.
The man glanced in terror at the pistol pointing at his head, in the hands of a gringo, one of those whom he had been told could hit a peso at a distance of a hundred metres.
“Si, señor,” he answered tremblingly.
As the two boats headed away, the whole shore line near them burst into flame, and the hiss of countless bullets sang warningly about them. Suddenly the suspected engineer threw up his hands and dropped to the deck.
CHAPTER VIII
PRISONERS
O’Neil stuck manfully at his post, the bullets showering around him as he stood exposed at the tiller.
Phil breathed more easily as the two launches, now secured together, put sufficient distance between them and the unfriendly shore.
The coxswain’s voice, raised anxiously, caused our lad fresh alarm.