“Back! back!  Run, Toddy!” screamed Archie, waving his arms.  “Get on the poop-deck; we can lick them there.  Run!”

Tod darted back, and the two defenders clearing the intervening rotten timbers with a bound, sprang upon the roof of the old cabin—­Archie’s “poop.”

With a whoop the savages followed, jumping over the holes in the planking and avoiding the nails in the open beams.

In the melee Archie had lost his pole, and was now standing, hat off, his blue eves flashing, all the blood of his overheated little body blazing in his face.  The tears of defeat were trembling under his eyelids, He had been outnumbered, but he would die game.  In his hand he carried, unconsciously to himself, the big-bladed pocket knife the captain had given him.  He would as soon have used it on his mother as upon one of his enemies, but the Barnegat invaders were ignorant of that fact, knives being the last resort in their environment.

“Look out, Sandy!” yelled Scootsy to his leader, who was now sneaking up to Archie with the movement of an Indian in ambush;—­“he’s drawed a knife.”

Sandy stopped and straightened himself within three feet of Archie.  His hand still smarted from the blow Archie had given it.  The “spad” had not stopped a second in that attack, and he might not in this; the next thing he knew the knife might be between his ribs.

“Drawed a knife, hev ye!” he snarled.  “Drawed a knife, jes’ like a spad that ye are!  Ye oughter put yer hair in curl-papers!”

Archie looked at the harmless knife in his hand.

“I can fight you with my fists if you are bigger than me,” he cried, tossing the knife down the open hatchway into the sand below.  “Hold my coat, Tod,” and he began stripping off his little jacket.

“I ain’t fightin’ no spads,” sneered Sandy. he didn’t want to fight this one.  “Yer can’t skeer nobody.  You’ll draw a pistol next.  Yer better go home to yer mammy, if ye kin find her.”

“He ain’t got no mammy,” snarled Scootsy.  “He’s a pick-up—­me father says so.”

Archie sprang forward to avenge the insult, but before he could reach Scootsy’s side a yell arose from the bow of the hulk.

“Yi! yi!  Run, fellers!  Here comes old man Fogarty! he’s right on top o’ ye!  Not that side—­ this way.  Yi! yi!”

The invaders turned and ran the length of the deck, scrambled over the side and dropped one after the other to the sand below just as the Fogarty head appeared at the bow.  It was but a step and a spring for him, and with a lurch he gained the deck of the wreck.

“By jiminy, boys, mother thought ye was all killed!  Has them rats been botherin’ ye?  Ye oughter broke the heads of ’em.  Where did they get that plank?  Come ’shore, did it?  Here, Tod, catch hold of it; I jes’ wanted a piece o’ floorin’ like that.  Why, ye’re all het up, Archie!  Come, son, come to dinner; ye’ll git cooled off, and mother’s got a mess o’ clams for ye.  Never mind ’bout the ladder; I’ll lift it down.”