Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/280

 kin fox-trot as well as you kin tango I'll never have another word to say agin female suffragettes."

But as Cap'n Abernethy spoke the grin froze upon his face.

"My God! Look there!" he shrilled, pointing a long finger towards the plain. Simultaneously the Misses Pringle, shrieking wildly, leaped from the trench towards the ship and Elmer fired a pistol shot.

Cleggett beheld five taxicabs, filled with Loge's assassins, charging towards the vessel at the rate of thirty miles an hour.

"To arms! To arms!" shouted the commander of the Jasper B.

But the enemy, with Logan Black in the lead, had already reached the trenches. They flung themselves to the ground and swept over the trench towards the bulwarks, twenty strong, with flashing machetes. So confident had Cleggett been that Loge would not dare to attack in broad daylight that he had scarcely even considered the possibility. It was the one fault of his military and naval career.

"Cutlasses, men, and at them!" he cried.