“Are these young men going to take Mr. Jenkins ashore?” he asked in adictatorial sort of tone.
“That is our intention,” was Nat’s rejoinder.
“Where are you going to land him?”
The words were ripped out more like an order than a civil inquiry. Natfelt a vague resentment. Evidently the black-bearded man looked upon theMotor Rangers as boys who could be ordered about at will.
“We are going to run into Santa Barbara as fast as our boat will take usthere,” was Nat’s reply.
“I want to go ashore with you,” declared the stranger. “I received wordearly to-day by wireless that makes it imperative that I should returnto San Francisco at once. Land me at Santa Barbara and name your ownprice.”
“This isn’t a passenger boat,” shot out Joe.
“We only came out here as an accommodation and as an act of humanity,”supplemented Nat. His intuitive feeling of dislike for the dictatorialstranger was growing every minute.
Perhaps the other noticed this, for he descended the gangway and tookhis place beside the ship’s doctor on the lower platform of the gangway.
“You must pardon me if my tone was abrupt,” he said in conciliatorytones; “the fact of the matter is, that I must return as soon aspossible to San Francisco for many reasons, and this ship does not stoptill she reaches Mazatlan. It was my eagerness that made me soundabrupt.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” rejoined Nat, liking the cringing tone of theman even less than he had his former manner, “I guess we can put youashore.”
The man reached into his pocket and produced a wallet. He drew severalbills from it.
“And here’s something to pay for my passage,” he said eagerly.
“Never mind that,” said Nat, waving the proffered money aside. “As Itold you, we are not running a passenger boat. If we land you in SantaBarbara it will be simply as an accommodation.”
“And one for which I will be grateful,” was the reply. “I’ll have asteward put my baggage on board your boat at once. I may be of aid toyou in caring for Mr. Jenkins, too, for I am a physician.”
“Yes, this is Dr. Sartorius of San Francisco,” rejoined Dr. Adams, asthe other ascended the gang plank with long, swift strides and was heardabove giving orders for the transfer of his belongings.
“You know him, then?” asked Nat of the ship’s doctor.
“Well, that is, he is registered with the purser under that name,” wasthe reply, “and I have had some conversation on medical subjects withhim. As a matter of fact, I think it is an excellent thing that hewishes to go ashore, for Mr. Jenkins is in a serious way and reallyneeds the constant watching of a physician.”
“In that case, I am glad things have come out as they have,” rejoinedNat. “Joe, will you go below and fix up the cabin for the injured man’suse, and then, doctor, if you will have him brought on board I’ll begetting under way again.”
Dr. Adams reascended the gangway and in a few minutes two sailorsappeared carrying between them a limp form. The head was heavilybandaged, rendering a good look at the man’s features impossible. ButNat judged that he was of powerful build and past middle age. Hedescended into the cabin with Dr. Adams, and under the surgeon’sdirections Mr. Jenkins was made as comfortable as possible. His baggage,as well as that of Dr. Sartorius, was brought below, and then everythingwas ready for a start.
Dr. Sartorius bent over the injured man and appeared really to take adeep and intelligent interest in the case. The ship’s doctor indorsedone or two suggestions that he made and the boys, for Ding-dong hadjoined the party, began to think that they might have been mistaken intheir first estimate of the doctor’s character.
“After all,” Nat thought, “clever men are often eccentric, and thisblack-whiskered doctor may be just crusty and unattractive withoutrealizing it.”
When everything had been settled, Nat and Joe made their way to thebridge and bade farewell to the doctor. The two sailors who had carriedMr. Jenkins on board cast off the _Nomad’s_ lines, and the steamer’ssiren gave a deep booming note of thanks for their act.
“You’d better lose no time in getting ashore,” hailed the captain, afterhe had thanked the boys for their timely aid.
“We shan’t, you may depend on that,” cheerily called back Nat, as the_Nomad’s_ engines began to revolve and the big _Iroquois_ commenced tochurn the water.
“We’re in for a sharp blow of wind, or I’m mistaken,” came boomingtoward them through the captain’s megaphone, for the two craft were bythis time some little distance apart.
Nat looked seaward. Dark, streaky clouds were beginning to overcast thesky. The sea had turned dull and leaden, while a hazy sort of veilobscured the sun. He turned to Joe.
“Hustle below and tell Ding-dong to get all he can out of the engines,and then see that all is snug in the cabin.”
“You think we’re in for a blow?”
“I certainly do; and I’m afraid that it’s going to hit us before we canget ashore. It is going to be a hummer, too, from the looks of things,right out of the nor’west.”
“But we’re all right?”
“Oh, sure! The _Nomad_ can stand up where a bigger craft might get intotrouble.”
Nat’s tone was confident, but as Joe dived below on his errand heglanced behind him at the purplish-black clouds that were racing acrossthe sky toward them. The sea began to rise and there was an odd sort ofmoaning sound in the air, like the throbbing of the bass string of atitanic viol.
“This is going to be a rip snorter,” he said in an undertone. “I’ll betthe bottom’s tumbled out of the barometer.”
CHAPTER III.
IN THE GRIP OF THE STORM.
“Phew! Hold tight, Joe; here she comes!”
Under the dark canopy of lowering clouds the leaden sea about the_Nomad_ began to smoke and whip up till the white horses champed andcareered, tossing their heads heavenward under the terrific onslaught ofthe wind.
“Some storm, Nat,” gasped Joe, clutching the rail tightly with bothhands as the _Nomad_ began to pitch and toss like a bucking bronco.
“About as bad a blow as we’ve had on this coast in a long time,” agreedNat, raising his voice to be heard above the shrieking tumult of windand sea.
“I’ll go below and get the oilskins, Nat,” volunteered Joe.
“You’d better; this will get worse before it’s better.”
Grabbing at any hand-hold to prevent himself being thrown violently onhis back, Joe made his way below once more.
“Goodness, this is fierce,” he muttered, as he went down thecompanionway and entered the cabin. Ding-dong had switched on thecurrent from the dynamo in the engine-room and the place was floodedwith light.
The injured man lay on the lounge where he had been placed and wasbreathing heavily. At the table sat Dr. Sartorius. He was bending over abundle of papers and perusing them so intently that, above all thedisturbance of the elements without, he did not hear Joe enter thecabin. He looked up as the boy’s shadow fell across the papers. Startledby some emotion for which Joe could not account, he jumped to his feet,at the same time thrusting the papers into an inner pocket.
“What do you want?” he breathed angrily, glaring at the boy with fury inhis dark eyes.
“Why, I came below for the oilskins. What’s the matter, did I startleyou?” asked Joe, regarding the man curiously. On his face was an oddblend of alarm and ferocity.
“Yes,—that is, no. I am very nervous. You must forgive me. I—there isbad weather outside?” he broke off abruptly.
“It’s blowing pretty hard,” Joe informed him, while he still noted theman’s odd manner.
“It will delay us in reaching shore?” demanded the other, sinking backinto his chair and staring at the heavily breathing form of Mr. Jenkins.
“I’m afraid so. If the weather gets any worse we shall have to slowdown. It’s too bad, for it is important that we get Mr. Jenkins to thehospital
as quickly as possible. He needs immediate medical aid.”
Dr. Sartorius ignored this remark. Instead he fixed his queer eyes onMr. Jenkins.
“How much shall we be delayed?” he asked eagerly the next minute.
“Impossible to say,” rejoined Joe; and then he added, with hisaccustomed frank bluntness, “You don’t speak as if you were in anyparticular hurry about landing.”
“It’s Jenkins yonder I’m thinking of,” was the reply in a semi-musingtone. “He may die if we are delayed, and you say that the storm is asevere one?”
“We’ll have to slow down, I guess,” rejoined Joe, and then, as the gongin the engine-room rang for reduced speed, he nodded his head. “There’sthe slow-up signal now. It must be getting worse. I’ve got to get ondeck.”
So saying, he rummaged two suits of oilskins out of a locker andhastened on deck. Spume and smoky spray were flying over the _Nomad_ inclouds. The craft looked like an eggshell amidst the ranges of wateryhills. Joe slipped into his oilskins and then took the wheel while Natdonned his foul-weather rig.
Presently Ding-dong, grimy from his engines, joined them.
“How is everything running below, Joe?” asked Nat, as the figure of theyoung engineer appeared.
“Fur-fur-fine as a h-h-h-hundred dollar war-watch,” sputtered Ding-dong;“ber-ber-but I’ve got her slowed down to ten knots. How about the sickman?”
“That can’t be helped,” declared Nat. “If I were to make any more speedin this sea, we’d all be bound for Davy Jones’ locker before manyminutes had passed.”
“Hum! That is certainly a fact,” assented Joe, as a big green sea roseahead of them like a watery hillock and the _Nomad_ drove her flaringbow into it. The water crashed down about them and thundered on thedeck.
“There’s a sample copy,” sputtered Joe, dashing the water from his eyesand giving a grin; but, despite his attempt to make light of the matter,he grew very sober immediately afterward. Stout craft as the _Nomad_was, she was being called upon to face about as bad a specimen ofweather as the Motor Rangers had ever encountered. What made mattersworse, they had a badly—perhaps mortally—injured man on their hands.Delay in reaching harbor might result fatally. They all began to lookworried.
Ding-dong dared to spend no more time on deck away from his engines. Ifanything happened to the motor, things would be serious indeed. He divedbelow and oiled the laboring motor most assiduously. Every now and thenthe propeller of the storm-tossed _Nomad_ would lift out of the water,and then the engine raced till Ding-dong feared it would actually rackitself to pieces. But there was no help for it; they must keep on now atwhatever cost.
For an hour or more the wind continued to blow a screaming gale, andthen it suddenly increased in fury to such a degree that Nat and Joe,who were taking turns relieving each other at the wheel, could feel itpressing and tearing against them like some solid thing. Their voiceswere blown back down their throats when they tried to talk. Theirgarments were blown out stiff as boiler iron.
“How much longer can we stand this——” Joe was beginning, shouting thewords into Nat’s ears, when suddenly there was a jarring quiverthroughout the fabric of the motor craft and the familiar vibration ofthe engines ceased. Simultaneously the _Nomad_ was lifted on the back ofa giant comber and hurled into a valley of green water, from which itseemed impossible that she could ever climb again. But valiantly shemade the ascent in safety, only to go reeling and wallowing down theother side in a condition of terrifying helplessness.
“Get below and see what’s happened,” bawled Nat at Joe.
The other hastened off on his errand, clinging with might and main towhatever projection offered. He had just reached the engine room when hesaw something that made him utter a cry of astonishment.
Slipping from behind a door which communicated with the cabin beyond wasDr. Sartorius. In his hand he had a monkey wrench. As for Ding-dongBell, he was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER IV.
WHEN THE ENGINE FAILED.
Joe Hartley’s mind, while not as active as Nat’s, worked quickly, and hesensed instantly a connection between the presence in the engine room ofSartorius and the stoppage of the motor. And this, although he could notimagine what possible purpose the man could have in such actions.Sartorius had tiptoed back into the cabin, where lay Mr. Jenkins,without casting a glance behind him. Joe crept forward with the samecaution till he gained a point of vantage from which he could see intothe lighted cabin.
Lounging back in a swivel chair with a magazine in his hand and a cigarin his mouth was the black-bearded doctor. On his face was a look ofcontent and repose. Apparently he was utterly oblivious to the wildtossing of the _Nomad_ in the rough sea, and had not Joe been certainthat it was their more or less unwelcome guest whom he had seen sneakout of the engine room, he would have been inclined to doubt his owneyesight.
Ding-dong’s sudden reappearance chased these thoughts swiftly out of hismind.
“Where on earth have you been?” he demanded, staring open-mouthed atDing-dong as if he had been a ghost.
“Wer-wer-what’s happened to the engines?” sputtered Ding-dong anxiously.
Joe drew him aside.
“I came down here the instant they stopped,” he said. “I caught ourblack-whiskered friend sneaking out of the engine room into the cabinwith a monkey wrench in his hand. I’m sure he tampered with the engine.”
“Phew! That’s rer-er-right in line with what I went on deck to tell Natabout.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just this. Happening to pe-pe-peek into the c-c-c-cabin a while back, Isus-sus-saw Wer-Wer-Whiskers kneeling in front of one ofJer-Jer-Jenkins’ trunks. He couldn’t get it open, and then I saw himtip-toe over to Jer-Jenkins and start to go through his pockets. Iber-ber-beat it up on deck to tell Nat.”
“Then you must have been going up the port companionway while I wascoming down the starboard, and that’s how we missed running into eachother.”
“Ther-ther-that’s about it.”
“What did Nat say?”
“To ger-ger-get the engines going and not mind anything else just now.”
“That’s right; we’re in a bad fix. I’ll stay down here and help you goover the motor. I can be of more use down here than up on deck.”
While the _Nomad_ took sickening swings and plunges, at times rollingover on her beam ends, the two lads went over the motor painstakingly.It was no light task in that turmoil and fury of wind and wave. Everyonce in a while, when the little craft took an exceptionally bad plunge,they exchanged glances which plainly said:
“Are we going to get out of this alive?”
Once in a while Joe stole away to take a look at the doctor, whom hesuspected of tampering with the motor. Each time he discovered nodifference in the man’s strange repose. He might have been taking hisease on a Pullman drawing-room car instead of being on board a craftwith which the elements were playing battledore and shuttlecock, for allthe signs he showed of uneasiness. Joe did notice, though, that fromtime to time he cast glances from the magazine in which he appeared somuch interested toward the lounge on which lay extended Mr. Jenkins’senseless form.
It was on his return from one of these excursions that Joe was hailed byDing-dong in an excited voice. Above the racket of the storm and theshouting of the voice of the wind there was not much danger of theirbeing heard in the cabin.
“Lul-lul-look here, Joe; the pur-pur-precious rascal!”
The young engineer pointed to the carburetor of the two forwardcylinders.
“What’s the matter with them?”
“The auk-auk-auk-auxiliary air valves have been tampered with, that’swhat, and lul-lul-look on the stern cylinders; the spark plugs have beentightened on till the porcelain cracked. No wonder she went out ofbusiness.”
“Crackers! The fellow who did that was no greenhorn round an engine.”
“Well, I gug-guess not. Just watch me get bu
sy. We’ll attend to hisnu-nu-nibs later on.”
Joe got fresh spark plugs from the locker where the extra parts werekept, and, while Ding-dong fitted them, he started adjusting thecarburetor which had been so skillfully tampered with. They were in themidst of this work when the tall form of Dr. Sartorius appeared in thedoorway between the cabin and the engine room.
“What is the matter? What has happened?” he asked, as if noticing forthe first time the stoppage of the engines.
“The motor stopped, that’s all,” spoke up Joe sarcastically.
“Dear me, in this storm that might have been serious,” said the doctor,holding on to the casement of the doorway to steady himself.
“I guess the fellow that did it didn’t know that we might all have goneto the bottom, or maybe he’d have thought a second time,” sputtered Joe,red-hot with indignation and not caring a snap if he showed it. Hestared straight at the other as he spoke, and he could have sworn thatunder his steady, accusing gaze the doctor paled and averted his eyes.
“But you have it fixed now?” inquired the doctor after a second,ignoring Joe’s peppery remark.
“Oh, yes, we’ve got it fixed all right, and we’ll take precious goodcare it doesn’t get out of order again for _any_ cause,” exploded Joe;“and another thing, doctor, we boys regard this engine room as privateproperty. Will you please retire to the cabin?”