“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.