“Yes,” nodded Joe. Then: “Say, Tom, I’ve just struck an easy scheme for connecting one of the armatures of the Morse register, aft, to a buzzer in the engine room. Then if I happen to be in the engine room when wireless messages are traveling through the air I shall know it.”
In the next hour all three of the boys, though they did not talk much about it, were wondering about this tragedy of the deep sea that had called them into action. Though they could not as yet guess it, this present affair of theirs was but the start of a series of adventures more amazing than any they had ever dreamed of. Now, at the most, they were curious. Soon they were to know what it meant to be astounded; they were soon to know what it felt like to feel haunted, to find themselves assailed by dread after dread. Undoubtedly it was merciful for them that they could not, at this moment, peer behind the curtain of the immediate future.
So, ignorant of what fate and destiny held in store for them, they were mainly intent, now, upon intercepting at the right point the big liner cruising swiftly southward.
In another hour they made out smoke on the horizon where Skipper Tom judged the “Constant” 26 to be. Later the spars of the steamship were visible through the marine glasses. Then the hull appeared. A few minutes later Captain Tom ran the “Restless” dashingly in alongside the great black hull of the liner, along whose starboard rail a hundred or more passengers had gathered.
Turning the wheel over to Hank, Captain Tom Halstead snatched up the megaphone as the larger vessel slowed down.
“‘Constant,’ ahoy!” bellowed the young skipper. “This is the yacht ‘Restless,’ sent to receive your injured passenger, Clodis.”
“‘Restless’ ahoy!” came the response from the liner’s bridge. “We’ll lower our starboard side gangway, if you can come alongside safely.”
The Motor Boat Club boys were at the threshold of their strangest, wildest succession of adventures!