“I am not afraid of your threats.  You can’t do anything to me.  Besides, you’re Boy Scouts and you wouldn’t harm me.”

“Never mind about that just now,” interrupted Jack.  “We can protect ourselves even if we are Boy Scouts.  You’ll learn that.”

“Sure he’ll learn it,” chimed in Tom.  “He’d better not monkey too far with this crowd.  We’ll make him eat that meat.”

“God idea,” declared Jack.  “Arnold, please start the coils and fry this chunk of meat for out friend.  He’s hungry.”

With these words, Jack drew an automatic and displayed it for the benefit of the visitor.  He had no intention of using the weapon, but felt it might have a salutary effect.  In this he was right.

“I can’t eat it,” cried the boy.  “It’s poisoned.”

“Ah, ha,” gloated Jack.  “I thought so.”

“Oh, please let me go away,” begged the lad.  “I’ll promise not to do anything against you again.  I’ll never bother you at all.”

“We don’t want to do anything rash,” Frank suggested.  “We won’t harm you if you’ll agree not to injure us, but we must know why you came aboard tonight as you did and what your purpose was.”

“Wyckoff made me,” groaned the boy covering his face with his hands.  “There,” he cried sitting up in bed, “now I’ve told, he’ll kill me sure.  Oh, I’m in trouble now.”

“Not so you could notice it,” gritted Jack, taking a firmer hold on his automatic.  “If Wyckoff tries any of his dirty tricks around here, we’ll fill him so full of holes he’ll leak straw.”

“You don’t know him,” shuddered the boy.  “He’s a desperate man.  He shot a nigger once just because the fellow disputed Wyckoff about a match.  He’s a bad, bad man.  I know him.”

“And still he had the nerve to tell us on Petit Bois that his hands were clean,” scornfully declared Jack.  “He makes me sick.”

“Oh, have you seen him?” questioned Carlos.

“He didn’t tell me that!  He just told me what I must do.”

“What did he tell you to do?” inquired Frank not unkindly.

“He said that in the after cabin of this boat under the floor boards I would find a plug driven into the skin of the boat to fill an auger hole.

“He directed me to remove that plug carefully and swim ashore.  I was not to awaken you but to get away quietly.”

“Well, you surely were the pussy-footed little sleuth,” declared Harry.  “It would have been impossible to hear you more than forty or fifty miles away.  There’s nothing the matter with that voice of yours.  I know an auctioneer who could use that noise.”

“Don’t rub it in, Harry,” advised Tom.  “The poor lad is having troubles of his own right now as it is.  He’s all in.”

“He brought it on himself,” maintained Harry.  “He wasn’t invited aboard.  If he’d stayed away, this never would have happened.”

“I know,” soothed Tom, “and you’ll find that most of the troubles we get into are caused by our own acts.  I’m sleepy.  Move we postpone this third degree business until morning.”