“We’ll keep ’em for you, all right,” growled Goliath. “You be the first one off that gangplank when she goes down, and get a hustle on you. And mind this—that if it’d been a square game me and my pardner wouldn’t turn a hand to help you, because—we both hates a squealer. It’s only because you’re such a dam old simpleton that we do anything at all. Maybe this’ll teach you a lesson!”

“It will! It will!” groaned the now “unlucky” Cochran, with great humility. “But—but—how you goin’ to hold ’em aboard this here ship?”

“We’re goin’ to horn into their cabin with a gun and just naturally keep ’em there,” said David as the plan slipped into his agile mind.

“By gosh! That’ll be good!” Cochran gleefully chortled. “Me for the head of that gangplank!”

David and Goliath stationed themselves outside the cabin door of the two sharpers and waited. They seemed to be in no hurry. Indeed, from the few sounds that could be overheard from within, they were indulging in a hot altercation and mutual recriminations.

“They’re fightin’ over the split, I got an idea,” David mumbled to his partner.

“Let ’em fight! Saves us trouble,” said Goliath.

The gangplank fell and the passengers began to pass away, in an orderly procession, before the cabin door opened, and the first of the sharks appeared. Instantly he was confronted by a determined little red-headed man, who said: “Just a minute. I want to talk to you two fellers. We’ll just step inside, if you don’t mind.”

With an oath of surprise the man fell back, and both Goliath and David entered, and closed the door behind them.

“You’ve got to wait here a few minutes. It won’t be long,” David remarked in a voice that forbade any light reply. “You might as well sit down and take it cool—unless you’re lookin’ for trouble.”

The card sharpers looked at each other helplessly, and, quite evidently believing themselves held up by officers of the law for some of their misdeeds.

“We’re in for it, Crump!” one of them growled at the other.

“You sure are, and the less you have to say the better it’ll be for you,” David announced sharply. Whereupon the evil pair settled disconsolately to the edges of the lower berth and stared at their captors.

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