But luckily help was right at hand.
"Catch a line!" came a voice from above, as the "Nomad" swept down on the two in the water.
At the same instant a rope with a running noose in it snaked through the air, thrown by Joe Hartley, at whose side was Ding-dong Bell, while Cal was close beside them. It was Joe, whose trick at the wheel it was, who had first sighted the drifting, submerged boat. How the Motor Rangers came to be in that part of the Pacific will be explained before long.
Captain Nelsen deftly caught the rope as Joe rang the engine room bell for "stop-reverse."
The captain was, of course, a total stranger to the boys and to Cal, and who the bedraggled boy might be whom he held in his arms they had no idea. All at once, however, as the captain adjusted the line about the boy's body, Nat's face was visible.
"It's Nat Trevor!" shrieked Ding-dong Bell, his hesitating English, as usual, leaving him under the stress of the moment.
"So it is. Great heavens, what can he be doing here!" gasped Joe, his face a study in amazement and delight if ever there was one.
"Thank God, we've found him, lads," said Cal, reverently removing his sombrero, which he still insisted on wearing, even on board the "Nomad."
In less time than it takes to tell it both the captain and Nat were on board the gallant little motor craft, while an amazed ship's company gathered about them, all trying to talk at once. Captain Akers, who, after battling with the storm the night before, had been taking a nap below, was aroused by the hub-bub, and came on deck, and so did Sam Hinckley, who had been at the engines. So engrossed was everybody that the "Nomad," with her engines still reversed, was allowed to drift backward at her own sweet will.
The extraordinary recovery of the boy they believed to be either drowned, or in the hands of their relentless foes, temporarily deprived all hands of the power to do anything except exchange thunderstruck looks and exclamations.