“There he is!” Harvey had cried. “Come, boys, get into shape now; but stay below till I give the word,—all but you, Joe,—and when I yell you pile out and get aboard that sloop the quickest you ever did anything in all your lives. He will fight, and we have got to act quick.” If the thick-set, ill-visaged man who sat at the wheel of the black sloop felt any concern at the sudden appearance of this new craft, dead ahead and coming down the narrow thoroughfare toward him, his alarm must have abated as on its near approach the apparent number of its occupants became disclosed. “She looks harmless enough,” he muttered, between his teeth. “Pshaw! There’s only a couple of boys aboard. But it did give me a start for a moment.” And he slapped a hand at his jacket pocket. “He’s taking long chances, if he did but know it,” said Harvey, as the big sloop came about after a tack close in shore. “That boat cannot more than clear those ledges by an inch, if it does that. It’s a regular stone field where he’s sailing. The channel here winds like a cow-path in a pasture. However, if he can clear there, we can, so we’ll begin to crowd him.” It was no easy matter now to close in on a boat beating across the thoroughfare and not arouse suspicion. To follow him, tack by tack, and point so as to head him off every time he went about, must inevitably put him on his guard long before the time came to strike, and might even allow him, by clever sailing, to slip by. With his cap pulled down over his eyes, so that the stranger could not by any chance identify him as the youth he had knocked down in the pasture the night of the fire, and his head bent low, Jack Harvey watched the man’s every move, and calculated every inch of the way. “Three more tacks will bring him up to us,” he said. “And there’s shoal water to starboard and some ledges just beyond them. He’s got to meet us about in that spot,” and Harvey laid his own course according to his calculation and held to it steadily. It must have served to allay the man’s suspicions, if he still had any, but now, as he came about on the third tack, he viewed the oncoming _Surprise_ with anger. “Keep away, there!” he cried, in a fierce, violent tone. “Keep off! Can’t you see you’re going to foul me if you don’t keep off?” “Ready to jump, now, Joe,” said Harvey, in a low voice. “I’m going to run him down. It’s the only way to be sure, though it may wreck us. “Fellows,” he called, softly, to the boys below, “all ready, now. You know what you’ve got to do the moment she strikes.” The man at the wheel had risen to his feet, and he shook one fist threateningly, while his other hand clutched the wheel, throwing his sloop off as far as he could. “Curse you!” he cried. “You’re running me down. Keep off, I say, or I’ll blow your stupid head off your shoulders.”