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He signalled to the engine room, quickly veered, and the brass twelve-pounder was pointed fairly at the tug. Meantime, by working frantically, the gunners quickly loaded the piece on the Atlamalcan craft and swung it around to bear on the other. "Look out for the Major!" called Captain Winton; "he is standing at the front."
"My sister is the guest of President Yozarro; I am anxious to see her; this gives me the opportunity." Major Jack Starland decided to make his ambassadorial trip to the Atlamalcan Republic by water instead of land, and to take as his companion, Captain Guzman, though there would have seemed to be slight choice between the two routes.
But the Atlamalcan tugboat, if tied by a hawser to the reptile could not have drawn it forth, for it will allow itself to be pulled asunder before yielding. Nor can any conceivable power induce the serpent to let go, its unshakable resolve being to draw its prey within its folds, instead of meeting its victim.
Had either of them trailed his hand in the current alongside the boat, a finger would have been nipped off in a flash by those concentrated sharks. There was a rush like that of the Atlamalcan tugboat and an immense alligator surged up from the muddy depths, and kept pace with the craft, as though tied to it.
Returning from this digression, the small boat was kept under careful survey until it returned from the General Yozarro. Some feared that a musket shot might be fired at the seamen, for the Atlamalcan is hot-headed and reckless, and the fully loaded saluting gun was kept pointed. "If I have to fire again," grimly said the mate, "I shall send the ball through her boiler, and sink the whole gang."
"I shall make known your crime to your government," shouted the Dictator, for nothing better to say. "I shall be glad; perhaps it would be better to lay it before The Hague Tribunal. The whole world will be interested in learning what a cowardly wretch calls himself President of the Atlamalcan Republic."
It will be recalled that the catboat, in which Major Jack Starland was descending the river in company with Captain Guzman and the Atlamalcan deserter, Martella, landed them at the spot where the young women had left the tug the night before, the cause for which action on their part has been made clear.
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