As the two hulls bumped slightly, Jed Prentiss made fast to the other craft’s rail with his boat-hook. Tom Halstead, with a wrench dropped into a hip pocket out of sight, leaped over the other boat’s rail down into the cockpit.
“You spoke about someone being aboard here?” quizzed the larger of the two strangers. “You can go ahead and find out your mistake. Open anything you want; look anywhere you please.”
Halstead’s first swift look in under the hood showed him only the motor housed there. While Joe Dawson and Jed Prentiss watched keenly, suspiciously, from the “Rocket’s” rail, the young skipper searched minutely under that hood deck. There was not a human being there, nor any trace of late occupancy by any. There were lockers. Tom raised the lid of every one. He might, in his dismayed wonder, have explored the gasoline tank, had he not known that the opening was too small to permit the entrance of a man’s body.
“Through in there? Satisfied?” called the larger of the two men, half-mockingly. “There are two lockers out here, and an after compartment out here in the cockpit.”
As soon as he was satisfied that there was no other possible place under the hood, Halstead accepted the invitation to make a search of the cockpit lockers and storage spaces. Yet it was all quite in vain.
Suddenly, however, the young skipper straightened himself, glaring down at a straight, not very distinct line that ran the length of the cockpit, even extending under the hood. As he looked swiftly up, he encountered the mocking gazes of the two boat handlers.
“That was a slick trick,” Captain Tom admitted, speaking dryly, though with an effort. “That line was made by the dirty keel of a small boat. In Cookson’s Bay, while hidden from us by that little island, you put the small boat over the side, and some of your passengers went ashore. Then you decoyed us all this distance out to sea to have the joy of laughing at us.”
“Blessed if I can guess what the lad means, friend,” said one of the rough pair to the other.
But Captain Tom Halstead, as he leaped back aboard the “Rocket,” and turned to them with flashing eyes, retorted gamely:
“I’m planning to have the pleasure, mighty soon, of showing you the value of the last laugh!”