CHAPTER IX
PLAYING A SAILOR’S TRICK
“FIGHT, if we have to,” was Tom’s laconic reply.
“Oh, dear, I do hope that won’t be necessary,” cried Moddridge, indeeper agitation. “All quarrelsome noises and thoughts get upon mynerves to a dreadful extent.”
“We won’t fight unless they put us to it,” answered Halstead. “And, ofcourse,” he added, with a slight smile, “we may get the worst of it. Wemay get ourselves fearfully whacked about.”
“Oh, dear!” groaned Moddridge again.
Nor was the nervous man one whit reassured by seeing Joe, after slowingup the engine somewhat, step up on deck bearing a couple of wrenches.As for Jed Prentiss, that youth had laid down the marine glasses topick up a formidable looking boat-hook.
Even with her lessened speed the “Rocket” was now within less than aquarter of a mile of the racing craft.
“Confound it! Now, what does that mean?” vented Tom, disappointedly,as he beheld one of the men aboard the other craft leap to his postat the wheel. In another moment the answer came. The racing boat wasmoving through the water again. Every instant her propeller churned upthe water a little faster.
“They’ve fixed their engine,” quavered Captain Tom. “What we’ve now gotto find out is whether their motor is strong enough to get them awayfrom us.”
For some three or four minutes the two craft remained about the samedistance apart, despite the fact that Joe Dawson, who had droppeddown once more into the engine room, was coaxing his motor along asskilfully as he could. Then, at last, the stranger began to draw ahead.
“The lucky scoundrels!” gritted Tom. “They’re able to go at leastpretty close to their full speed. See ’em eat up the miles again!”
“At least, then, there’ll be no fight,” declared Mr. Moddridge, in atone of relief.
“Nor will your friend and our employer have any chance to get back tohis own boat at present,” retorted Tom Halstead. Ordinarily he couldstand this nervous man’s agitated spells, though just now they woreupon the young skipper’s patience.
For a few miles the chase continued, the stranger gaining all thewhile. The two boats had been running, lately, about five miles off theLong Island coast. Now, the stranger could be seen heading much moreto the northward, as though intent on making the coast.
“Jed,” directed the young skipper, “see whether you can pick up themouth of Cookson’s Inlet ahead of the stranger.”
“There’s a break in the beach over yonder,” reported Prentiss, soon.“It doesn’t appear to be more than fifty feet wide.”
“It’s sixty-two feet,” responded Tom Halstead, who had made a hardstudy of all this part of the Long Island coast “And confound them ifthey try to go in there.”
“Why?” inquired Eben Moddridge.
“It’s mighty shallow water, the other side of the inlet,” CaptainHalstead explained. “That other boat probably doesn’t draw more thantwo and a half feet of water. Our draught, on account of our very heavyengine, is nearer nine feet. I don’t know just how far we can followthem in that little bay. In some places the water isn’t over four feetdeep.”
“Then they are not playing fairly,” muttered Moddridge, in a tone ofdeep disgust.
“Rascals rarely do play a fairer game than they’re obliged to do,”answered Tom, with a queer little smile. “However, all we can do is tostick to them as long as we are able.”
With two boats going at such high speed it was not long before themouth of the inlet was made. The stranger, however, passed throughabout four minutes ahead of the “Rocket.”
Once in the bay the motor boat boys found themselves not far from alow, sandy island, on which were a few trees and three small cottages.
“There they are, passing the other side of the island,” hailed Jed,pointing to the top of the stranger’s single mast, visible for aninstant before it disappeared behind a rise in the sandy surface of theisland.
“It looks as though they’re just running around the island,” mutteredTom Halstead. “We won’t follow; we’ll meet ’em.”
Putting the “Rocket” about, the young skipper steered for the other endof the island. In a few minutes he passed around it, to discover thatthe strange craft had put about, and was going back the way it had come.
“I think, sir,” explained the young skipper, turning to Mr. Moddridge,“that the shortest way out of this hide-and-seek game will be to keepright after that pirate’s stern.”
“All right,” nodded Moddridge, hesitatingly. “Yet why do you call thatother boat a pirate?”
“Any boat deserves the name that sails on queer business, and is evenafraid to show her name-plate at her stern,” Halstead rejoined.
The stranger still led, in that race in the narrow way between theisland and the main shore.
“Good enough, too,” growled Halstead, as his keen eyes noted a slightchange in the color Of the water ahead. “They are leading us into theshallows. Jed, get the lead, run up to the bow and cast it in a hurry!”
Even as he gave the order, the young skipper, his hands tremblingslightly from vexation, turned the speed control to lessen the“Rocket’s” headway.
Jed, poising the lead, made the neat cast of a practiced sailor,letting the flannel-tagged line pay out rapidly between his fingers. Atthe instant the line slackened Prentiss, half-turned toward the helm,sang drawlingly back:
“And a qua-arter, two!”
That signified two and a quarter fathoms, or thirteen and a half feetof water under the bottom of the cruiser, which drew about nine feet.
Rapidly hauling in, while the “Rocket” now hardly more than crawledalong in these shallows, Prentiss heaved the lead once more.
“And a scant—two!” he reported. Joe Dawson, leaping to the deck, rangedup alongside of Jed. The water had a shallower look ahead.
“A-a-and three-qua-arters—one!” came the hail from the leadsman.
Ten and a half feet meant a foot and a half to spare under the deepestpoint of the cruiser’s keel.
Once more Jed poised the lead for the heave, but Joe, taking a moreknowing look, shouted back:
“Reverse her, captain, or you’ll poke her nose in the mud!”
Instantly Captain Halstead’s hand flew to the reversing lever. Slowlythe motor boat stole backward. The stranger had passed around to theseaward side of the little island, and was making for the inlet.
“They’re playing with us!” grumbled Skipper Tom. “The fun’s all theirs,for they’ve got the faster craft.”
Just as soon as the “Rocket” had once more five feet of water to spareunder her hull Halstead decided to head about, the way he had come,and put on all speed for the inlet. Yet, so expensive of time was thisproceeding that, when the Delavan boat once more glided through theinlet, the stranger was three miles out to sea, heading south.
“That fellow must be laughing at us,” faltered Eben Moddridge.
“Of course he is,” flared Tom Halstead. “And I could grind my teeth, ifthat sort of work would do any good.”
“W-w-what can we do?” stammered the nervous one.
“Only keep up the chase until one or the other breaks down, or runsout of gasoline,” replied the young skipper, doggedly.
For almost an hour more the boats continued to head south. All but thehigh parts of Long Island were below the horizon. Yet Halstead, callingJed to the wheel, though still directing the course, believed that hewas gaining on the other boat, even if very slowly.
“We’ve gasoline enough aboard,” the young skipper explained to thenervous man, “to keep running for twenty-four hours yet. I hope thatother fellow hasn’t.”
“B-b-b-but see here,” quavered Moddridge, a new alarm dawning upon hismind, “if that other crowd should let us get alongside, and th-thens-s-s-shoot at us—it would be awful!”
“That’s a chance we’ve simply got to take,” replied Tom Halstead,coolly, “if we’re to try to reach Mr. Delavan and get him back aboa
rdhis own boat.”
“I—I—I couldn’t s-s-stand anything of that sort!” almost screamed thenervous one.
“Then will you get off the boat, sir, and walk?” inquired the youngskipper, with perhaps pardonable irritation. This exhibition ofweak-kneed manhood made him indignant.
Erelong the stranger was a good twenty miles south of the nearestpoint on the Long Island coast. Both boats had traveled fast over thegently-rolling sea. The conditions would have been ideal for a race,had the stakes been less important.
“Maybe their gasoline is running so low that those fellows are ready tobe reasonable,” grinned Joe Dawson, turning from the stand he had takennear the bow. It could be seen, now, that the stranger was slowing downher speed. Presently she was lying to.
“That must be a confession of a tank low with gasoline,” cried CaptainTom, jubilantly, hastening forward with the glasses. “Steer straightfor her, to come up on the port side, Jed.”
Seeing Joe again disappear below, to reappear with a pair ofugly-looking wrenches, Eben Moddridge turned very pale, and nexthastened, shakily, to the steps leading down to the after deck. Thencehe vanished into the cabin.
“Say,” uttered Joe, disdainfully, “I wish I had _his_ fighting blood!”
Still the stranger lay to, only two men showing in her cockpit. As the“Rocket” came much closer to her possible prey Tom Halstead again tookthe wheel, while Jed stood close to where his prized boat-hook lay. Tomshut off most of the speed as he ran in closer to port of the stranger.The two men visible aboard the other boat were now standing by therail, looking curiously enough at the motor boat boys.
“‘Rocket’ ahoy!” hailed one of them, as Tom manœuvred his craft withineasy talking-distance of the other. “Have you been following us?”
“Some!” admitted Halstead, dryly.
“Why!”
“To see whom you have aboard.”
“Only us two boat-handlers on board,” replied one of the pair.
“Tell that to the mermaids,” retorted Captain Tom, grimly.
“Don’t you believe us?” demanded the same speaker, the larger of therough-looking seafaring pair.
“I’m not very good at believing,” was the younger skipper’s reply.
“Then wait until we get slowly under way, and you can come upalongside. I guess you can board us, on this gentle sea, withoutscraping either hull,” proposed the speaker aboard the racer.
That offer, made in seeming good faith, almost staggered Tom Halsteadfor the moment. Why the stranger should run away for hours, thensuddenly agree to be boarded, was not at once apparent.
“Unless they want to get one of us aboard, or want to try the mightyrisky trick of capturing us on the high seas,” reflected the youngskipper. “However, all we’re here for is to find and rescue Mr.Delavan. We’ve simply got to try to do that.”
So he nodded, allowed his boat to fall away, then come up alongside theracing boat, now under slow headway.
As the two hulls bumped slightly, Jed Prentiss made fast to the othercraft’s rail with his boat-hook. Tom Halstead, with a wrench droppedinto a hip pocket out of sight, leaped over the other boat’s rail downinto the cockpit.
“You spoke about someone being aboard here?” quizzed the larger ofthe two strangers. “You can go ahead and find out your mistake. Openanything you want; look anywhere you please.”
Halstead’s first swift look in under the hood showed him only themotor housed there. While Joe Dawson and Jed Prentiss watched keenly,suspiciously, from the “Rocket’s” rail, the young skipper searchedminutely under that hood deck. There was not a human being there, norany trace of late occupancy by any. There were lockers. Tom raised thelid of every one. He might, in his dismayed wonder, have explored thegasoline tank, had he not known that the opening was too small topermit the entrance of a man’s body.
“Through in there? Satisfied?” called the larger of the two men,half-mockingly. “There are two lockers out here, and an aftercompartment out here in the cockpit.”
As soon as he was satisfied that there was no other possible placeunder the hood, Halstead accepted the invitation to make a search ofthe cockpit lockers and storage spaces. Yet it was all quite in vain.
Suddenly, however, the young skipper straightened himself, glaringdown at a straight, not very distinct line that ran the length of thecockpit, even extending under the hood. As he looked swiftly up, heencountered the mocking gazes of the two boat handlers.
“That was a slick trick,” Captain Tom admitted, speaking dryly, thoughwith an effort. “That line was made by the dirty keel of a small boat.In Cookson’s Bay, while hidden from us by that little island, you putthe small boat over the side, and some of your passengers went ashore.Then you decoyed us all this distance out to sea to have the joy oflaughing at us.”
“Blessed if I can guess what the lad means, friend,” said one of therough pair to the other.
But Captain Tom Halstead, as he leaped back aboard the “Rocket,” andturned to them with flashing eyes, retorted gamely:
“I’m planning to have the pleasure, mighty soon, of showing you thevalue of the last laugh!”