“Sentry,” whispered Dave, “do you make out a second craft, following the first?”
“Just barely sir,” replied the sentry, after a sharp look.
Unless the two small craft changed their courses speedily Darrin knew that he would have to hail them and warn them off. In these piping times of peace in the Philippines, there was nothing very suspicious in two boats coming close to a war vessel at anchor. Still, the two canoes could not be permitted to come up alongside without the occupants first giving an account of themselves.
“It looks like a race,” Dave told himself, as he continued to watch intently. “Jove, I am tempted to believe that the second canoe is trying to overtake the leader. What can it—”
In the act of bawling an order forward, Ensign Dave Darrin felt his tongue hit the roof of his mouth. For, at this instant, the pursuing canoe ranged up alongside the first.
There was a dim flash of something, accompanied by a yell of unearthly terror.
“Light!” shouted Dave Darrin huskily.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
In a twinkling, the narrow, dazzling beam of one of the forward searchlights shot over the water.
Within three seconds it had picked up the smaller of the canoes. To the watchers from the deck of the gunboat this canoe appeared to be empty.