“It looks as though they’re just running around the island,” muttered Tom Halstead. “We won’t follow; we’ll meet ’em.”
Putting the “Rocket” about, the young skipper steered for the other end of the island. In a few minutes he passed around it, to discover that the strange craft had put about, and was going back the way it had come.
“I think, sir,” explained the young skipper, turning to Mr. Moddridge, “that the shortest way out of this hide-and-seek game will be to keep right after that pirate’s stern.”
“All right,” nodded Moddridge, hesitatingly. “Yet why do you call that other boat a pirate?”
“Any boat deserves the name that sails on queer business, and is even afraid to show her name-plate at her stern,” Halstead rejoined.
The stranger still led, in that race in the narrow way between the island and the main shore.
“Good enough, too,” growled Halstead, as his keen eyes noted a slight change in the color Of the water ahead. “They are leading us into the shallows. Jed, get the lead, run up to the bow and cast it in a hurry!”
Even as he gave the order, the young skipper, his hands trembling slightly from vexation, turned the speed control to lessen the “Rocket’s” headway.
Jed, poising the lead, made the neat cast of a practiced sailor, letting the flannel-tagged line pay out rapidly between his fingers. At the instant the line slackened Prentiss, half-turned toward the helm, sang drawlingly back: