“Go ahead—” she flung back. “I’m all for it!”
Bill grinned at her enthusiasm, and with the engine running full, he started to edge off and work ahead. But he could not help being impatient at the thought that the contraband might be dropped at any minute and hooked up by the others. He took too close a turn. As the Mary Jane hauled abreast about two hundred yards ahead, the smugglers sighted them. Their motor sailor swerved sharply to port, and with a sudden acceleration, it dived into the gloom and was lost to sight.
“Bluffed off!” he shouted triumphantly.
He turned the wheel and was swinging back into the liner’s wake when Dorothy gave a cry and pointed to the water off their port quarter.
“Look! There! There!” she screamed.
Staring in the same direction, Bill saw what at first he took to be a number of small puffs of spume. Then he saw that they were rectangular. The Mary Jane had already passed them and a second later they disappeared from view.
Bill nearly twisted off the wheel in an effort to put about immediately. The result was to slow down and nearly stop their heavy boat. Gradually the Mary Jane answered her helm and presently they were headed back in the ship’s path.
And then as the Mary Jane was again gathering speed, the motor sailor came slipping out of the smother headed straight for the contraband, her broadside presented toward her pursuers.
“Stand by for a ram!” yelled Bill and pulled out his automatic.
Not fifty yards separated the two boats. Bows to the gale, the Mary Jane bore down on the motor sailor. If those aboard her realized their danger, they had no time to dodge, to shoot ahead, or avoid the ram by going hard astern. They swerved and the Mary Jane struck full amidships with a fearful grinding crash.