CHAPTER XXIII—THE START OF A LONG CHASE
Captain Andrews burst into the hotel a short time later like a bombshell, scattering bell-boys and guests in his mad rush to reach Jack and Tom, who were awaiting him in a corner of the lobby.
“If you want to catch those fellows you must come with me right away,” he exclaimed pantingly; “they’ve gone to sea in Cap. Flinders’ motor boat. They started half an hour ago; but if we hurry I’ll go after them in mine, and there’s a chance we can overhaul them, or at least keep track of them.”
Of course the reference to Captain Flinders’ motor boat was so much Greek to Jack, but the captain would not explain any more just then.
“Don’t waste time talking,” he exclaimed; “I’ll tell you about it as we go along. Shiver my topsails, but they’ll get away yet if we don’t hurry.”
It was evident enough, from all this, that there was not a minute to be lost, and Jack and Tom, who had their hats on, followed the energetic seaman out of the hotel without an instant’s hesitation. Outside was a row of taxicabs. Jack engaged one of these, and they started off for the “T” wharf at a rattling speed.
As they spun along the captain explained how he had got upon the track of the gang of rascals.
“This Captain Flinders is a regular shark,” he declared; “he’ll do anything for money, and has a mighty bad reputation along the water front. Well, as I was standing on the end of the Buttermilk Wharf where he keeps his boat—the Tarpon, and a clipper she is, too—I saw him meet four precious seedy-looking chaps. One looked like an old cab-driver and the rest were as bad.
“‘What’s in the wind now?’ I thought, and as they came toward me I slipped in behind a pile of bales, for I didn’t want Flinders to see me, and was curious to know what he was doing with that outfit of ragamuffins. Well, as luck would have it, they stopped just the other side of the pile of bales, and I could hear some of what they said. I heard enough to convince me that they were the chaps you were after, in disguise, and then I jumped for a telephone.”
The boys fairly gasped in their eagerness to hear more.
“Were they all there?” demanded Jack.
“Well, there were four of ’em. And they’ve got the model, too. I heard one of ’em, a chap the others called Melville, laughing about the way they’d tricked you by sneaking out of a stable by a secret back door.”
“So the rascals were there, after all,” exclaimed Jack; “well, if that doesn’t beat all!”
“Well, when I came back from ’phoning to you, what should I see but the Tarpon putting out into the stream. Right then and there I started for the hotel and there’s a chance—just a chance—that we may catch ’em yet. You see, from what I heard, they were figuring on not sailing till to-night, but I guess they changed their minds.”
“Jumping Jupiter!” exclaimed Tom, “this is warm work with a vengeance. You didn’t overhear them say where they were bound for, captain, did you?”
“Yes, East Hampton, they said. But here’s the wharf. Come on, pile out. Jack, you pay the cabman while I get the old Sea Gull ready.” When the boys joined the captain once more they found him busied over the engine of a good-looking cabin motor boat about thirty feet in length.
“Will you be ready right away?” inquired Tom, “because if not, I guess we ought to ’phone to Mr. Bowler. He’ll be anxious if we are missing without any explanation.”
“All right, boys. You’ll have time for that, but hurry.”
In five minutes the boys were back, and Captain Andrews announced that all was ready. No time was lost in casting off, and in five minutes more the Sea Gull’s bow was headed downstream. A long chase had begun, and one that was to prove remarkable in more ways than one.
“Seems queer, doesn’t it,” remarked Jack, “to think that only a short time ago we were sitting in the hotel, thinking we’d lost the trail for good and all, and here we are, hot on it again, only by sea instead of land.”
“It does,” agreed Tom, who was looking after the engine, while Captain Andrews steered. The motor of the Sea Gull was a powerful, four-cylindered, four-cycle one, developing twenty horsepower. This made the Sea Gull unusually fast for a craft of her class, but the boys recalled that Captain Andrews had told them that the Tarpon was a swift craft, also.
Twilight found the Sea Gull well off shore, and riding a swelling sea. Jack, who was on the lookout, was the first to sight, some five miles ahead of them, another motor craft.
“Can that be the Tarpon?” he exclaimed, pointing.
“Here, take the wheel a minute while I overhaul her,” said Captain Andrews eagerly.
He dived into the cabin and reappeared with a pair of strong binoculars. He focused these on the distant craft, and after a brief scrutiny announced that it was beyond doubt the Tarpon that they had sighted.
“She must have had some sort of engine trouble,” he declared, “or she would have made better time than this.”
“Can we overhaul her, do you think?” questioned Jack anxiously.
Captain Andrews shook his head doubtfully.
“Even if she had to slow down for a time she is creeping ahead now; but maybe, if all goes well, we can keep on her track through the night. For one thing, we know that she is bound for East Hampton, and I could find my way there blindfolded.”
“Perhaps I could fix your engine so that it will give us a little more speed,” volunteered Jack.
“I wish you could, lad,” responded the seaman, taking the wheel from the boy once more.
“I’ll do what I can,” promised Jack.
He fell to work on the motor, and found that by readjusting the carburetor he could coax more speed out of it. By this time it was dark, and, having finished his work on the motor, Jack went forward with the running lights. Soon they were shining out like twin jewels—red to port and green to starboard. Then he set the stern light, and coming back eagerly looked into the night ahead of them.
All at once through the darkness a white light flashed up and instantly vanished, only to reappear again as the Tarpon rose on a wave crest.
“So long as we keep that light in sight we are all right,” declared Captain Andrews, and resigning the wheel to Jack, he went below to prepare supper, which meal they ate in “relays.” Coming on deck after his meal, Jack saw, to his astonishment, that the dancing white light ahead of them was much closer than it had been before he went below. This meant that they were overhauling the Tarpon.
“We’re creeping right up on her,” declared Captain Andrews, when Jack mentioned this fact to him; “we ought to be alongside in half an hour if we keep on at this gait.”
The words sent a thrill through Jack.
“That means a fight,” he said calmly, although his heart beat fast.
“That’s what it does, lad,” returned the doughty captain, “but there are three revolvers below, and we’ve got the law on our side—don’t forget that.”
“No, and I don’t forget that they are five to our three,” added the boy, with a grim smile.
As they crept closer, Tom was apprised of the turn events were taking. He was provided with a revolver, and Captain Andrews armed Jack and himself likewise.
“I don’t approve of firearms; fists is my way of fighting,” he said. “But we are going up against a gang of sea sharks that are desperate, and we may have to fall back on the guns.” Silence fell on the party as they slowly but surely crept up on the bobbing, dancing light ahead. As they came within hailing distance Captain Andrews boomed out a hail:
“Tarpon, ahoy!”
But no answer was vouchsafed.
“Looks as if they are going to cut up rough,” opined the captain; “well, there’s nothing for us to do but heave alongside and board them. You’re not scared, Jack?”
“Not a bit. I’m too hot to get at the rascals who have caused us so much trouble to feel scared of them.”
Captain Andrews spun his wheel over and prepared to bear down on the light, but as he drew up close to it a bewildered look passed over his face. At the same instant Jack spoke:
“Isn’t there something rather odd about that light, captain?”
“Just what I was thinking, lad. It’s low down in the water and—by the great horn spoon! They’ve fooled us. That light’s nothing more than a lantern set adrift in a bait tub!”
And so it was. The wily party on board the Tarpon had certainly played a successful trick on their pursuers. Extinguishing their own stern light, they had set the lantern on a bait tub, dropped it overboard and cast it loose to drift at its own sweet will.
“So, for the last three hours, we’ve been following a will o’ the wisp!” groaned Jack dismally.
“Looks that way,” agreed the captain. “Consarn it all, we might have known that they’d be up to some such trick as that—such a shipload of pirates.”
He shoved back his cap and scratched his head.
“It’s a game of blind-man’s buff from now on, lads,” he said; “do you want to take a chance?”
“While there’s one left we’ll take it,” declared Jack stoutly.
“I wonder how far astray that old tub led us,” mused Tom a few minutes later, when they were once more on their course.
“Impossible to say,” said the captain, “but a light tub like that would drift fast, and their trick will have given those lubbers a big lead on us.”
“Not much doubt of that, I’m afraid,” agreed Jack; “but we may as well keep right on now. Possibly we’ll get track of them at East Hampton.”
With only this hope to buoy them through the long night hours, the trio clung to the marine trail. All of them were too excited to sleep and so they took turn and turn about at steering, attending to the engine and keeping a lookout.
As the first gray warning of dawn came on the eastern horizon, Captain Andrews consulted his log, compass and charts. He declared that they were not far from East Hampton, and that unless something had happened to the Tarpon during the night, she must have landed her passengers there. This was a bitter pill to swallow, but the boys kept hoping against hope while the light grew stronger.
But as the surrounding sea became visible in the summer’s dawn, a cry of delight broke from three throats simultaneously.
Bobbing up and down on the swells not half a mile off lay the Tarpon. She was motionless, except for the action imparted by the waves, and it was evident that something was the matter with her engines.
“Guess they tried to run so fast during the night that they overheated them,” declared Captain Andrews, as he gazed at the other craft.
He turned his wheel, and the Sea Gull began to head toward the Tarpon. At first it appeared that they were not observed, but the next instant they found out differently. Something sang through the air above Captain Andrews’ head.
Jack saw a flash and a puff of smoke from one of the portholes of the Tarpon’s raised deck cabin, and a few seconds later came the report of a rifle. Then, borne clearly across the water, came a megaphoned threat:
“Keep off, or it will be the worse for you.”
Captain Andrews snatched up the Sea Gull’s megaphone. His bronzed face was flushed with rage, and his voice shook with suppressed fury as he bellowed back:
“You infernal scoundrels, what do you mean by firing at us? Are you going to let us board you and give up that model, or do we have to make you?”
“Oh, run along and play,” came back from the Tarpon, in a voice which the boys recognized as Jake Rook’s.
“You keep away from us if you know what’s good for you,” came back in another voice.
“By Neptune, boys,” growled Captain Andrews, “it kind of looks as if they had the upper hand of us after all. I don’t see how we can board them as things are now. It’s no use sticking our heads in a hornet’s nest, and that’s what we’d be doing if——Hello! They are moving again; guess they’ve got their engine fixed. Well, we can stick to their heels, and if they run into a town we can arrive close enough to them to have them arrested.”
“But will they make for a town now that we are so close on their tracks?” wondered Jack.
“Isn’t it more likely they’d land along the coast some place, where there was no risk of encountering the authorities?”
“Jove, lad, I don’t know but what you’re right. Well, all we can do is to tag along and watch our chance.”
“Look, one of them is coming out of the cabin with a megaphone,” cried Tom suddenly.
They watched a figure clamber up on the stern of the boat ahead and raise the speaking trumpet.
“Sea Gull, ahoy!” came the hail.
“Aye! aye! what do you want with us?” bellowed back Captain Andrews, in no amiable tone.
“It’s no use your following us. If it’s the model you are after, we landed it last night while you were chasing that bait tub!”
If a bombshell had exploded in their midst the party on the Sea Gull could not have felt a deeper sense of consternation. The long chase had been for nothing then, and, as Jack had put it, they had indeed been pursuing a “will o’ the wisp.”