other
hesitated.

"Why, I'll--I'll blow you and your blamed schooner and all hands of you
to blazes!" exploded Slocum.

"You will, eh?" retorted Brown, slipping his right hand casually into
his jacket pocket. "Then--hands up, you skunk! hands up; and look spry
about it, or by the living Jingo I'll shoot! Up with 'em, I say. Ah!
that's better, a good deal!" as Slocum slowly and reluctantly raised his
hands above his head in response to our skipper's command, emphasised by
a levelled revolver which the "Old Man" had produced so rapidly that it
was quite like a conjuring trick.

"Now, Mr Temple," continued Brown, addressing me but keeping his eye
unwaveringly upon his prisoner, "just you go to the rail and persuade
them two in the dory to come up on deck; persuade 'em with yer gun if
you can't do it any other way. I guess we'll have to go on usin' force,
now that this cantankerous cuss have obliged us to begin. And you, Mr
Cunnin'ham, be good enough to pass the word for the carpenter to lay aft
wi' three sets of irons."

"Here, I say, you monkey-faced old pirate, whatcher givin' us? Whatcher
mean by callin' for irons? You don't mean ter say you're goin' to make
a prisoner of me, do yer?" demanded Slocum, dropping his hands in his
fury.

"Hands up!" snapped the skipper, quick as lightning. Then, as Slocum
threw them up again, he replied:

"Not goin' to make a prisoner of ye, eh? You bet I sure am, then, you
and the hull of your crowd, since you've come here spoilin' for trouble.
But I don't want no trouble myself, I ain't that sorter man; so I'm
goin' to keep you 'uns safe in irons until I've finished my business
here, a'ter which I'll release ye, and you can do what yer like."

"The fust thing I'll do when you release me is to blow the blamed head
off your shoulders, ye all-fired pirate," snapped Slocum viciously.

"Put this man in irons," ordered Brown, as the carpenter came along, and
the next minute Slocum was fettered and Chips was overhauling him to
make sure that he had no concealed weapons about him. Meanwhile I had
succeeded in "persuading" the two men who constituted the crew of the
dory to leave their boat and come up on deck, and they, too, were
promptly clapped in irons. Thus we already had in our power three of
the _Kingfisher's_ complement of ten men all told, leaving seven, as
opposed to our own fourteen.

"Take 'em away and confine 'em below in the fore peak," ordered Brown.
And when