at what he had just said must be looked on as a sort of
challenge by the miners on the beach. There could be no more parleying
after that defiance had been given. It meant war.

Consequently, Ned was not at all surprised to hear the dimly seen men
break out into an angry roar of shouts, and to see them start toward the
stern of the wreck, with the evident intention of swarming aboard.

There were several flashes as firearms sounded, so that altogether it
looked as if the battle had opened.

After that it was folly to dream that they could pull through peaceably,
when these hired minions of the fraudulent mining corporation were so
bent on carrying out their own plans and which consisted of making the
boys prisoners.

Ned gave the word, and immediately the scouts commenced shooting. They
could see the advancing figures fairly well in the half darkness, and at
such short range it would have had to be a pretty poor marksman who
could not have hit his target had he really wanted to do so. But the
scouts were not ferociously inclined. Ned had begged them not to resort
to stern measures, unless it were absolutely necessary, and something
desperate had to be done in order to prevent the enemy from
accomplishing the capture of the old hulk.

So while they rattled away merrily with their repeating guns, they took
care not to mow the advancing men down. This was easily accomplished by
shooting so as to send their bullets into the sand of the beach; and as
the assailants could not tell what the sanguinary result of the furious
fire might be, they no doubt imagined that terrible execution was being
wrought in their ranks.

Some of them managed to reach the stern of the wreck; others stumbling
over flotsam and jetsam on the beach were crawling around, seeking
shelter from the blaze of fire that leaped all along the bulwarks above.

It was a pretty warm time while it lasted, and even Jack and Teddy
seemed to be engaged, for the roar of their guns chimed in with the
rest. If those three men, who had slipped away from the rest, had
managed to climb aboard, by means of some dangling rope, they,
doubtless, speedily realized that it was not a safe place in which to
linger.

"Stop firing!" cried Ned, suddenly, "they've fallen back, and the first
round goes to us."

"That was the easiest licked squad I ever ran across!" boasted Jimmy;
"and, while I'm about it, I might as well confess that I had to crease
one feller in the leg, fo