But Jed did not waste time looking or listening. He fitted another rocket, touching it off after swift aim. That one whizzed between the heads of two of the three men out forward, and Jed heard their rough words of alarm and anger.
“Wow!” ejaculated the boy. “I’m a whole Navy! What?”
Another rocket he aimed at the three men. They scrambled in all directions. Still another rocket Prentiss drove through the pilot house windows. Jed heard the engine room bell jingle for the stop.
“I’ll give you plenty of it,” gritted Prentiss, thrusting a hand into the box and bringing forth this time a stout Roman candle—a fourteen-ball affair.
Lighting and waving it, Jed was ready, at the pop of the first ball, to aim the affair at the tug boat. The missiles fell all about. Though Jed did not know it, one of the hot, glowing balls struck Captain Jonas French squarely on the end of his bulb-like nose. He let out an Indian-like yell, dropping the wheel. Another man crawled in on his knees to take the skipper’s place, but he kept down below the wood-work of the front of the pilot house, steering by the lower spokes of the wheel.
The tug’s bell sounded for reversed speed, then for the go-ahead, as the craft swung her bow around. They were retreating, but Jed, chuckling aloud in his glee, sent three more rockets after the tug, just to show her people that he had plenty of ammunition left. Then, when the tug was out of range, Jed stood up, gazing after her dim lines.
“Say, maybe there are a few Deweys left in America,” he laughed aloud. “I wonder what’s the answer?”
Meanwhile, at the Sanderson farm, business was proceeding at a rate that entitled the word to be spelled with a very large capital “B.”
Mr. Lawrence and his comrades, under Captain Tom’s pilotage, were hidden where, despite the darkness, they could get a very fair idea of what was going on at the pier. Joe had led Warren and the other local officers up where they could know what was going on behind the farmhouse. Sanderson, Alvarez and all hands except Captain Jonas French, were working like so many industrious ants. Two of the men were moving cases out of the new shed onto the pier. The rest were bringing cases down to the pier from the farm outbuilding. All the cases were being piled at the end of the pier.