"Crickey!" breathed Torry, "even the Colodia couldn't travel like this shark."
"Oh! you admit it, do you?" grinned Frenchy. "Well, we are going some!"
But there was an element working against the S. P. 888—an element which could not be controlled. No matter how speedy the oil boat might have been, the chaser could have overtaken her had she kept a straight course. That was understood.
But the farther they went the more certain it was that this new element was going to balk them. It was fog. The horizon was masked by it, and soon the damp feel of it was upon them.
Mr. MacMasters paced the deck anxiously. Not a smudge of smoke did he or the lookouts raise. But the growing fog cloud would soon have hidden anything of the kind, even if the oil boat had been near at hand.
"Fog-haunted, Morgan," he said to Whistler, with disappointment. "We'll run on for a while; but it is hopeless, I guess. You say you know one of the men aboard that power boat?"
Morgan told him what he knew of the bewhiskered man called Blake; and also of the little water wheel that was whirling under the waterfall at the Elmvale Dam, although really, it did not seem to him as though that little invention could have a serious connection with any alien-enemy activities.
"I will report the whole thing," Mr. MacMasters said. "But, of course, the Department receives similar and even less assured testimony every day, of suspiciously acting persons. The information furnished the Department has all to be sifted. There may be nothing wrong with this man Blake."
"If he is working at the munition factory, how comes it that he is out here on an oil-laden boat?" demanded Whistler, with what he thought was shrewdness.
"Quite so. You boys are naval apprentices, but you were out fishing to-day," returned Mr. MacMasters, grimly. "There is an explanation for everything, my boy."