“How about it?” she called.
“Not so good,” he growled, and poured in the contents of another tin. “This engine is powerful, but when you say it’s primitive, you only tell the half of it. The darn thing laps up gas like a—”
“Bill!” Dorothy raised her arm—“there’s another motor boat ahead!”
Both of them stared forward into the gloom. For a moment Bill could see nothing but the seething waters and the faint glimmer of the liner’s taffrail light. Then in an eddy of the driving sleet he caught a glimpse of a dark bulk rising on a swell a couple of hundred yards ahead. At the same time they both heard the whir of a rapidly revolving motor distinctly audible between the staccato barks of their own exhaust.
“The motor sailor, Bill!”
“Sure to be. It must have cut in close under the steamer’s stern. Let me take the wheel again, Dorothy.”
“O. K. Do you think they’ve seen us?”
“Not likely. They’ll be watching the ship and her wake. To see us, they’d have to stare straight into the teeth of the wind and this blinding sleet.”
“But they’ll hear us, anyway?”
“Not a chance. That motor sailor’s got one of those fast-turning jump-spark engines. They run with a steady rattle. There’s no interval between coughs. Ours are more widely punctuated. Anyhow, that’s the way I dope it. They’ve probably signaled the ship by this time, and the contraband ought to be dropped from a cabin port at any time now.”