Being thus committed by Goff's capture of the electric launch to what promised to be the most chanceful of all the hazards of that strenuous night, we lost no time in setting about it. With all the good will in the world, the old skipper might not be able to do much for us in the way of delaying the return of the mutineers to the Andromeda, and it said itself that our one slender hope of success lay in capturing the yacht while it was, in a certain measure, undefended.
Luckily, the launch's painter was long enough to serve as a tow line, and with five of us towing, and Billy Grisdale steering against the shoreward drag with an oar, we soon had the launch out of the danger zone. Once fairly out of sight of the long-boat and the beach of peril, we ran like flying fugitives, as jealous of the flitting moments as a miser of his gold. To save the utmost number of these precious moments, Van Dyck and Jerry Dupuyster dropped out of the towing rank after we were well down toward the western end of the island and cut across through the wood to arouse the camp, leaving four of us to take the launch around to the point at which the embarkation could be most quickly made.
Having but a comparatively short distance to go after Van Dyck and Jerry left us, we arrived first at the agreed rendezvous, and I went aboard the launch to try to determine how we were going to handle and propel it with eighteen people crowded into its narrow limits. As Goff had said, there were three good oars, and the broken halves of another; but rowing from the thwarts, with the jammed lading we should have, was clearly out of the question. And the alternative—two or three of us standing up to use the oars as paddles—seemed to be quite as clearly impracticable. If the launch would suffice to float eighteen of us, trimming it as carefully as we could and sitting as tight as the shipwrecked sailors in the old song, we could hardly ask more of it.
"Small room for so many of us, Mr. Preble—is that what is troubling you?" asked the professor, standing by while Grey and Billy Grisdale ran up to the camp in the glade to hasten the laggards.
"Little space, and still less tonnage," I said. "I'm doubtful if she will float all of us at once."
"Those useless storage batteries," he pointed out; "they are quite heavy, aren't they? Can't we lighten the boat by taking them out?"
It was a good thought, and I set about acting upon it. But the batteries were built in snugly, and without a wrecking tool of some sort they could not be dislodged. There was a locker under the stern sheets, and rummaging in this for tools, I came upon a leather-cased object which proved to be far more serviceable than any wrecking crow-bar. It was an electric flashlight, and a touch of the switch showed that its batteries were alive and in working order.
"Let's have a look at this driving mechanism before we jettison it," I said; and the professor held the light while I looked to see what Van Dyck's disabling rifle shot had done to the motor.
To my great joy I found that the bullet had not short-circuited the motor, as we supposed; it had merely smashed the switch of the controlling rheostat. Working rapidly while Sanford held the flashlight, I was able to make a temporary repair that would enable us to utilize the motor, and I was giving the propeller shaft a few trial turns when Van Dyck and Jerry, and Grey and Billy came down to the beach with the hastily gathered ship's company; sixteen of them and the bull pup—for which latter Billy had been shrewd enough to make Edie Van Tromp sponsor and special pleader.
As I had feared we should be, the eighteen of us and the dog were a frightful overload for the small launch, this though Van Dyck had made the fugitives leave every ounce of dead-weight behind in the camp. In addition, there was honest terror to make the hurried embarkation almost a panic. We had no assurance that the mutineer-pirates would take our quiescence for granted; we knew they wouldn't if the loss of the launch should be discovered. Every instant I was half expecting to see the fat bandit and his mongrel crew burst out of the shadowy wood to charge down upon us. In which event, there would be a bloody massacre; it could hardly be less.