WORD OF A STRANGE CRAFT
Picked up by the boat at Starfish Cove, to which Bob had made his way without suffering any great inconvenience, the boys were rowed to the Nark where they were greeted on deck by Captain Folsom and Lieutenant Summers.
At once the speedy craft got under way again, and was soon edging seaward yet with the low coast line on her bow, a creaming smother of water under her forefoot. Lieutenant Summers, after greeting the boys pleasantly, returned to his duties. Leaning over the rail with them, Captain Folsom began to speak of the liquor smugglers.
No trace had been found of Higginbotham, he said. Inquiry had been made at the McKay Realty Company offices, but Mr. McKay who was said to be out of the city on business, had not yet returned, and nobody else could be found who could give any information of Higginbotham’s haunts. It was learned he led a bachelor existence and had rooms 200 at a downtown apartment hotel. The hotel had been visited, but Higginbotham had not put in an appearance nor called by telephone.
A search warrant had been obtained and the rooms entered and inspected. But no papers of any sort that would give a clue to Higginbotham’s connections in the liquor traffic were found. A canny man, he had avoided keeping any such incriminating documents about. Ryan and the other prisoners had been released on bail, Ryan himself putting up the bond money which amounted to a large sum.
“If only I could lay my hands on the principals behind this plot,” said Captain Folsom, thoughtfully. “The liquor smuggling is growing, and there is every evidence that some organizing genius with a great deal of money at his command is behind it. The newest manifestation of the smugglers’ activities came the other day when an airplane which fell into a field near Croton-on-Hudson and was abandoned by the aviator, who was unhurt, was found to have carried 200 bottles of expensive Canadian liquor. And a map of the route from an island in the St. Lawrence near Montreal to Glen Falls, New York, thence to New York City was found in the cockpit. It was well-thumbed, and showed the trip must have been made many times of late.”
“But, if you do catch the principal, won’t that 201 merely result in curtailing activities of the smugglers for the time being, but not in putting a permanent stop to them?” asked Frank. “Aren’t the profits so large that somebody else with money, some other organizing genius as you say, will take up the work?”
“Perhaps, you are right,” said Captain Folsom. “This prohibition law has brought to pass a mighty queer state of affairs in our country. It is one law that many people feel no compunctions at violating. Nevertheless, I feel that behind all these liquor violations in and around New York City to-day there is a man of prominence, someone who has united most of the small operators under his control, and who virtually has organized a Liquor Smugglers’ Trust.
“If we can land that man,” he added, “we will strike a blow that will deter others for a long time to come from trying to follow his example. And I have the feeling that the events which you boys precipitated will lead us to that man—the Man Higher Up.”
So interested were the boys in this conversation that they failed to note the near approach of the Nark to an ancient schooner. They stood gazing at the creaming water under the bow, caps pulled low over their eyes to protect them from the sun’s glare, and their radius of vision was strictly limited. Now, 202 however, the speed of the Nark sensibly diminished until, when they looked up in surprise and gazed around to see what was occurring, the boys found the Nark practically at a standstill while a cable’s length away rode an ancient schooner, lumbering along under all sail, to take advantage of the light airs.
“By the ring-tailed caterpillar,” exclaimed Frank, employing a quaint expression current the last term at Harrington Hall, “where did that caravel of Columbus come from? Why, she’s so old you might expect the Ancient Mariner to peer over her rail. Yes, and there he is.”
He pointed at the figure of a whiskered skipper, wearing a dingy derby, who peered over the rail at this moment in response to a hail from the Nark.
There was some foundation, in truth, for Frank’s suggestion. The old schooner whose name they now discerned in faded gilt as “Molly M,” seemed like a ghost of other days. Her outthrust bow, her up-cocked stern and the figurehead of a simpering woman that might have been mermaid originally but was now so worn as to make it almost impossible to tell the original intent, was, indeed, suggestive of galleons of ancient days. This figurehead jutted out beneath the bowsprit.
As the skipper of the ancient craft thus responded to the hail from the Nark, he put a hand to his ear as if hard of hearing.
“Lay to. U. S. patrol boat,” returned Lieutenant Summers, impatiently.
“Evidently our friend believes we have come up with a liquor smuggler,” said Captain Folsom, in an aside, to the boys.
But the old skipper, whose craft was drawing away while the Nark rocked idly in the swell, with her engines barely turning over, merely repeated his gesture of putting a hand to his ear, and once more called:
“Heh. Heh.”
Suddenly the deck beneath the feet of the boys quivered slightly, there was the report of a three-pounder, and a shot fell across the bow of the old schooner, kicking up a feather of spray. The Ancient Mariner, as Frank had dubbed him, came to life. He danced up and down on his deck, where two or three other figures of seamen now appeared. He shook his fist at the Nark.
“I’m outside the three-mile limit,” he screamed. “I’ll have the law on ye.”
“He means,” explained Captain Folsom to the boys, “that he is beyond the jurisdiction of United States waters and on the open sea.” 204
Nevertheless, the old skipper barked out an order, sailors sprang to obey, sails came down, and the schooner lay hove to. Then the Nark approached until only a boat’s length away. On the deck of the schooner, only the skipper stood. The seamen had gone below, their tasks completed.
“Look here, my man,” said Lieutenant Summers, “you may be outside the three-mile limit, but you are drawing the line pretty fine. What are your papers?”
The old skipper looked at him shrewdly, quizzically, from out his ambush of whiskers. A slow grin broke over his features.
“Ye know well as I we’m outside the three-mile limit,” he said. “So I don’t mind tellin’ ye. I got liquor aboard. But my papers is all clear, an’ ye can’t touch me. I’m from Nassau in the Bahamas for St. John. Two British possessions. An’ I’m on my course.”
Lieutenant Summers’s face grew red. Captain Folsom’s eyes twinkled, and the boys saw one of the Nark’s crew, an old salt, put up a big palm to hide a smile.
“The old shellback has our skipper,” whispered Captain Folsom to the boys. “He has him on the hip. We are outside the three-mile limit, undoubtedly. To think of the old Yankee’s spunk in telling us he has liquor aboard. His papers will be as he says, 205 too, but just the same that liquor will never reach St. John. It is destined for a landing on our own coast.”
Lieutenant Summers also was of the opinion apparently that he had been foiled. And little as he relished the fact that the old skipper was laughing at him up his sleeve, there was naught he could do about it. However, he decided to pay a visit to the “Molly M,” for he called:
“Stand by to receive a boat. I am coming aboard.”
Presently, the boys saw the little boat dancing over the waves, then Lieutenant Summers climbed to the deck of the schooner, and he and the old skipper disappeared together down the companionway.
Awaiting his return, Captain Folsom enlightened the boys about the difficulties of preventing liquor from being smuggled into the country.
“As you can see from this instance,” he said, “the traffic is carried on openly, or under only a thin coating of camouflage. That boat fully intends, no doubt, to land its cargo along our coast somewhere. But her papers are all in order and as long as she stays outside the three-mile limit we can do nothing about it. Of course, we can hang to her heels and prevent her from landing. But while we are doing that, other smugglers slip ashore somewhere else. It’s a weary business to try and enforce such a law 206 at first. And, what makes it harder,” he concluded, his brow clouding, “is that every now and then some member of the enforcement service sells out to the liquor ring, and then the rest of us who are doing our work honestly and as best we can are given a black eye, for everybody says: ‘Ah, yes, they’re all crooks. I thought so.’
“But here,” he said, “is Lieutenant Summers returning. Now we shall see what he found out.”
The old skipper and the naval officer appeared on the schooner’s deck, Lieutenant Summers went overside, and the boat returned with him. Once more the schooner put on sail, and began to draw away. When he reached the deck, Lieutenant Summers sent a sailor to summon Captain Folsom and the boys below. They joined him in the cabin.
“I have news for you boys,” said Lieutenant Summers, at once. “Captain Woolley of the ‘Molly M’ proved to be a pretty smooth article,” and he smiled wryly, “but from a member of his crew, one of my men learned that a speed boat answering the description of your stolen craft had been seen alongside a sub chaser manned by a crew in naval uniform off Atlantic Highlands on the Jersey coast.”
“Hurray,” cried Frank, “one of your fleet must have recaptured it.”
Lieutenant Summers shook his head. 207
“That’s the puzzling thing,” he said. “If one of our boats had found your craft adrift or captured it with the fugitive smugglers aboard, I would have been notified by radio. You see, the schooner sighted the sub chaser and motor boat yesterday. This sailor, a talkative chap apparently, told my man they thought the chaser was a ship of the ‘Dry Navy’ and crowded on all canvas to edge away from dangerous company. Then, he said, they could see these uniformed men aboard the chaser leaning on the rail and holding their sides from laughing at the schooner. What it all meant, he didn’t know, but at any rate the chaser made no attempt to pursue.”
“And you haven’t heard from any of your fleet that our boat was recovered?” asked Jack, in surprise.
“From none,” said Lieutenant Summers. “However, I shall order ‘Sparks’ at once to query all the ships.”