glancing from the
cabin roof.

Gus slipped in two more shells and coolly waited, knowing that there was
only a remote possibility that the shots from the dory would do any
great harm, but intending, if the rascals fired again, to give them a
real taste of buckshot firing, at the bow of their boat first, to
splinter and sink it gradually; then at the men if they persisted.

The dory turned about quickly. The oarsman was evidently in haste to get
away. Then came a hail:

"Say, you! What you do in thata boat? That our boat! Get out, I say to
you! We want to come aboard and go on away!"

Gus had heard that voice before. It belonged to one of the Malatesta.
Did they have Tony with them? Were they making a terrible effort to
escape in this way from the peninsula, and get to sea again? How then
would they secure the hoped for ransom? Or were they merely going to
hide the _X-Ray_, expecting to use her if their scheme fell short? Bill
had sensed the situation.

"_Your_ boat, is she? You'll find her back at Hawk's Bill where she
belongs, and in a little while you're going to find yourself in jail.
Beat it now while the water's fine!"

The oarsman was nothing loath. Either he was not the bravest in the
party, or else he had the keenest appreciation of the odds against an
exposed position. In a very few minutes the dory was a mere gray wraith
on the water, but there it hung. Evidently the rower was overruled by
others less cautious, or of the certain conviction that at the distance
the yacht was a better mark than a rowboat.

Bill had the motor going in a jiffy. Gus was at the wheel, crouching.
Throwing in the reverse clutch he sent the boat off the sands. Then,
letting Bill hold her steady, dropped the _Stella's_ sails, cast her
loose at the end of a hauser for a tow rope, paid it out from the stern
and went back to the wheel.

He was about to swing round and head back into the narrow channel free
from sand bars, which he could discern by the rougher water, when
bullets began to come from the dory. They were aimed at the wheel and
whether sent low or not, the trajectory, even from a high-powered gun,
would pull them down to the danger level. One struck the mast directly
in front of him. One hit the deck and glanced singing. The music from
another flattened bullet was stopped by the water beyond.

Gus wanted desperately to get behind something, for this firing might
mean death or wounding at any moment. But he held on,