Red Dick leaned over the bridge rail and laughed. He looked the _Svend Foyn's_ top gear over and laughed again. "Blank shells and wooden guns!" he called out. "Fine! Any more left?"
"Oh," I said, "not all blanks and not all wooden, and a few left--yes."
"So?" he says, and gives an order. A man pulls a tarpaulin off a long needle-gun amidships. "Got anything like that in your battery?" he calls out.
I looked it over as if I was interested. At the same time I made a sign to my mate behind me. I'd long before this loaded my two whaling bomb-lance guns, but this time I put in them the lances, which were of steel, weighed eighty pounds, and were four and a half feet long--not a bad little projectile at all.
"What's it for?" I called out, pointing to his needle-gun.
"What's it for?" he mimics. "What d'y' think it's for?"
"I know you, and I'll take no chances with you. I'm going to heave you a line and take you in tow."
"I don't remember flying any signals for a tow."
"No? Well, I think you'd be better off for a tow. Take my line."
"Take my line or I'll blow a few holes in you, and while you're on your way to the bottom of the straits--all hands of you--I'll ram you to make sure."
"You're foolish to sink us," I says, "till you take off the ambergris and the sealskins."
He began to get mad. "Take my line or take a shell from this gun. Which is it?" he yells.
His gun was trained on our midship topsides. I couldn't see where he was going to sink us, leastwise not with one shot, so, "Come aboard with your shell!" I called out, and he did. I didn't look to see what damage the shell did in passing, but it went clear through our pine topsides one side and out the other.
I'd already passed the word to my mate, and wh-r-oo! went the four-and-a-half-foot bomb-lance from the inside of one of our make-believe seven-inch rifles. The lance tore through just above the water-line of Red Dick's steamer. The bomb exploded inside her hull. Through the hold the sea rushed, and from her deck below came whoops of surprise.
I rolled the little fat _Svend Foyn_ around. She near capsized in turning, especially as Red Dick let me have two more from his needle-gun while we were coming around. One of them burst inside, but didn't kill anybody. Around came the _Svend Foyn_.