“There! They’re hoisting anchor!” muttered the charter-man, at last.
“I saw ’em start,” nodded the young skipper. “And the fog is growing thicker every minute.”
“How are you going to beat them, if they try hard to get away?”
“I don’t know,” confessed Halstead, honestly. “We may keep ’em in trail, but the chances are all in favor of the drab boat.”
Presently the seventy-footer slipped slowly away from her anchorage. Halstead promptly closed in, keeping not more than a hundred feet behind her drab stern. If the fog grew no 170 heavier, and the enemy’s speed no greater, he could maintain his position.
But the sea-born fog continued to come, looking as though it arrived in ever-increasing billows.
Once the seventy-footer’s stern vanished for a moment or two. Tom, cautiously increasing the speed, soon came in sight of that drab stern once more.
“I don’t want to croak, sir,” warned the young motor boat skipper, “but, luck aside, it looks as though we’re about done for in this salt water blindman’s buff.”
“I realize it,” nodded Powell Seaton.
Just then the seventy-footer crawled ahead again into the fog, and was lost to the pursuer. Throwing the wheel somewhat to port, Captain Halstead tried to come up on the Drab’s quarter. A full minute’s anxious suspense followed, but the enemy’s stern did not show through the white shroud of the atmosphere.