This time, when Paul thrust him back, he seized the oar in his hands, and his companion jumped aboard.  I put my back against the tiller, and no sooner had he landed, and before he had caught his balance, than I met him with another oar, and he fell heavily backward into the boat.  It was getting serious, and when he arose and caught my oar, and I realized his strength, I confess that I felt a goodly tinge of fear.  But though he was stronger than I, instead of dragging me overboard when he wrenched on the oar, he merely pulled his boat in closer; and when I shoved, the boat was forced away.  Besides, the knife, still in his right hand, made him awkward and somewhat counterbalanced the advantage his superior strength gave him.  Paul and his enemy were in the same situation—­a sort of deadlock, which continued for several seconds, but which could not last.  Several times I shouted that we would pay for whatever damage their net had suffered, but my words seemed to be without effect.

Then my man began to tuck the oar under his arm, and to come up along it, slowly, hand over hand.  The small man did the same with Paul.  Moment by moment they came closer, and closer, and we knew that the end was only a question of time.

“Hard up, Bob!” Paul called softly to me.

I gave him a quick glance, and caught an instant’s glimpse of what I took to be a very pale face and a very set jaw.

“Oh, Bob,” he pleaded, “hard up your helm!  Hard up your helm, Bob!”

And his meaning dawned upon me.  Still holding to my end of the oar, I shoved the tiller over with my back, and even bent my body to keep it over.  As it was the Mist was nearly dead before the wind, and this maneuver was bound to force her to jibe her mainsail from one side to the other.  I could tell by the “feel” when the wind spilled out of the canvas and the boom tilted up.  Paul’s man had now gained a footing on the little deck, and my man was just scrambling up.

“Look out!” I shouted to Paul.  “Here she comes!”

Both he and I let go the oars and tumbled into the cockpit.  The next instant the big boom and the heavy blocks swept over our heads, the main-sheet whipping past like a great coiling snake and the Mist heeling over with a violent jar.  Both men had jumped for it, but in some way the little man either got his knife-hand jammed or fell upon it, for the first sight we caught of him, he was standing in his boat, his bleeding fingers clasped close between his knees and his face all twisted with pain and helpless rage.

“Now’s our chance!” Paul whispered.  “Over with you!”

And on either side of the rudder we lowered ourselves into the water, pressing the net down with our feet, till, with a jerk, it went clear, Then it was up and in, Paul at the main-sheet and I at the tiller, the Mist plunging ahead with freedom in her motion, and the little white light astern growing small and smaller.