That idea had flashed into Jack’s mind, but as yet he could not say; for he was unable to see just what advantage such a course would be to the fugitives. True, the pursuers had been overhauling them so fast of late that it began to appear as though they were having trouble with the engine Jenks had fixed. If that proved to be the case, then they might have been seized with a fear that they were going to be overhauled; and as it was too late now to reach land, the next best thing would be to make a floating battery of the raft, and keep their persistent enemies off, until they could steer the clumsy float nearer the shore.
“What’s the programme, Jack?” called George, who was doubtless fairly quivering with excitement, and eager for hostilities to begin.
“You come up on the left, while we take the right,” replied the other, just as though he had figured all this out, as he undoubtedly had.
“Do we board the pirate boat?” George went on.
“We’ll have to, if we expect to retake it for Algernon,” Jack answered.
“They’ll put up a stiff fight, Jack, don’t forget that,” the skipper of the Wireless went on to say.
“Well, if only they’d get cold feet it’d make it all the easier for us,” Josh broke in with, just then. “And don’t I wish every fellow had a gun like Jack, here. Then we’d have ’em dead to rights, and they’d soon throw up the sponge, when we started in to bombard the lot with shot. Say, Jack, you expect to use that same little Marlin, I hope; for what’s the good of a gun when you won’t make it squeal?”
“I’ll use it to let them know we’re armed, first of all,” Jack explained, “and that might go a good ways toward making them surrender.”
“But hold on, Jack, don’t do that if the two shells are all you’ve got. A nice sort of thing that’d be, to scare the game, and not have anything to pink ’em with afterwards,” Josh went on to say, in alarm.
“Oh! I’ve got a few more in my pocket,” returned the other. “I was wise enough to slip some shells in my coat before we left camp the first time. Don’t worry about that, Josh. There! wasn’t that a man’s head bobbing up above the stern of the other boat just then?”
It certainly must have been, for immediately there came a hoarse hail across the intervening water.