“What are you going to do, Halstead?” demanded Eben Moddridge, leaping to his feet as he caught the infection of this new excitement.
“Do?” uttered Captain Tom. “That’s the same craft that hung about us yesterday, plainly trying to nose into our secrets. The same craft that afterwards tried to play a trick on us to make us reach East Hampton late. And just now the fellows aboard the stranger laughed at us. What am I going to do? Why, sir, we’re going after her, going to overhaul her, if there’s the speed in the ‘Rocket.’ We’ll even try to board that stranger, Mr. Moddridge, and see whether Francis Delavan is aboard against his own will!”
CHAPTER VIII
THE DASHING STERN CHASE
NOT a single objection did the man of nerves offer. Ordinarily he might have jumped with fear at the proposal to go at fast speed through the fog. Though the mist was already lifting a good deal, as it had done on the day before, there was still enough of a curtain ahead to make it more than just risky to go rushing along.
In the white bank ahead the racing boat was already lost to sight. Captain Tom raised his hand to pull the cord of the auto whistle.
“If I show ’em where I am, though,” he thought, at once, “the man handling that other craft will know enough to swing off onto another course. He can leave me behind easily enough.”
The auto whistle, therefore, did not sound. Captain Tom understood fully the risk he was taking in “going it blind”—and fast, too—right on this pathway of Long Island navigation. But he made up his mind that he would very soon begin to sound his whistle, whether he sighted the other craft or not.
“If they haven’t changed their course I’ll soon be in sight of them,” the young skipper reflected, anxiously. “Oh, that this fog lifts soon!”
Having guessed the other boat’s course, Tom could follow it only by compass, as any other method would be sure to lead him astray.