What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise by H. C. Edwards & George Cary Eggleston

Author:H. C. Edwards & George Cary Eggleston [Edwards, H. C. (Harry C.)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andhof
Published: 2015-12-30T23:00:00+00:00

“But we are not smugglers.”

“That’s for you to settle with the lieutenant. It’s my business to arrest all of you and take you on board the cutter.”

In a low voice, before the boatswain had finished his sentence, Larry said to his comrades:

“Jump over the log—we’ll make a breastwork of it,” and instantly they obeyed, leaving him on the side next the revenue men. Then to the boatswain he said:

“You’ve no right to arrest without a warrant. I tell you once for all we’ll not submit to arrest.”

“What’ll you do then?”

“We’ll fight first,” answered Larry, delivering the words like shots from a pistol, and leaping to the farther side of the fallen tree as he spoke.

The boatswain was bewildered. He knew, in a vague way, that no one can legally make an arrest without a warrant, except when he sees a person in the act of committing crime or running away from officers; but he had never before had an experience of determined resistance. He was accustomed to the summary ways of brute force that prevail in military life, and to him it seemed absurd for anybody to resist the only kind of constituted authority with which he was familiar.

He was sorely perplexed. He was by no means sure that the boys were the smugglers he had been sent to arrest. On the contrary, their manner, their speech and all other appearances were in their favor. Nevertheless his superior officers had been watching the dory’s movements for several days and had sent him ashore in full assurance that they had their quarry at bay. He was convinced that he ought to arrest the party, but he had only four men and himself for the work, and there stood four stalwart young fellows behind the fallen tree trunk with four double-barreled shotguns bristling across the barrier. The creek, with a sharp bend, lay upon their left and completely covered their rear, while on their right was a swamp so densely grown up in cane and entangled vines, to say nothing of the treacherous mud below, that passage across it would have been nearly impossible in the broadest light of day. Clearly Larry’s party must be assailed in front if assailed at all, and the boatswain was not to blame for hesitating to make an assault which would almost certainly cost the lives of himself and all his men. Add to this his uncertainty as to his right to make any assault at all, and what he did is easily understood.

He ordered his men to fall back to their boat, and as they did so he stood alone where he had been. When the men were well away, he said to Larry:

“You don’t think me a coward, do you?”

“Certainly not,” Larry answered.

“Well, this thing may get me into trouble you know, and if you’re the man you say you are, I may want you to help me out as a witness. Will you do it?”

“Yes, certainly. But what’s the use of getting into

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