Joe brewed coffee and got cold meat and bread from a locker, and the boys took turns relieving each other at wheel and engine. In the driving spume and under the dark clouds that went whistling by above their heads it was impossible to see more than a few yards before them. They had not the slightest idea how far they might be off the coast.
In the middle of all this anxiety and turmoil, Joe got the fright of his life. He was on the bridge, holding the Nomad to her course as well as he could—considering the drift she had made when the motor was idle—when, out of the storm, terror, real and thrilling, swept down upon him. Above the crest of a big wave there suddenly appeared the wallowing hull of another motor boat! She was smaller than the Nomad and was making dangerously bad weather of it.
Joe had hardly time to see the other craft before she was flung toward the Nomad like a stone out of a catapult. Joe spun the spokes of the Nomad’s wheel furiously, but with her rudder clear out of the water half the time the motor craft did not respond as obediently to her wheel as usual.
“Look out! You’ll run us down!” bawled Joe to a figure he saw crouching behind the cabin of the other boat.
“Our engine’s broken down!” came the answer, flung toward the young helmsman by the wind. “Help us!”
Above the bulwarks of the other boat, as the two small craft swept by in the storm rack within a few inches of each other, appeared two other heads. Joe caught their shouts for aid and frantically rang the signal bell to summon the others on deck. Nat and Ding-dong came tumbling up to ascertain what fresh accident had happened. They arrived just in time to see the other motor boat, a white-painted, dainty-looking craft, swept onward amid the towering seas.
“They’ve broken down—need help—what can we do?” bawled Joe into Nat’s ear.
The leader of the Motor Rangers looked troubled. The other craft was by this time wind-driven some distance from them. To try to overtake her would be a most risky maneuver. Nat saw in his first glance at the other boat that she was not fitted at all for outside work. She was evidently a mere pleasure craft which had probably been overtaken unexpectedly by the northwester before she had had time to make port.
It was a trying dilemma that faced those on the Nomad. Below, they had what was in all probability a dying man. At any rate, his life depended upon the speed with which they could make port. On the other hand, three human beings equally doomed to destruction, if help did not speedily reach them, had just been driven by, the helpless victims of the storm.
Nat and his chums found themselves facing a question which comes to few men, and assuredly to still fewer lads of their ages. As usual, the others looked to Nat for a decision. But it was longer than usual in coming. Young Trevor felt to the full the heavy responsibility that lay upon him in this crisis. If he took after the storm-wracked pleasure craft with its human cargo, he was running a grave risk of losing all their lives without saving the others. On the other hand, the appeal for help from the powerless victims of the storm had struck a chord in Nat’s heart which was never unresponsive. In the course of their adventurous careers the Motor Rangers had aided and benefited many a human being, but never before had they encountered any in such urgent need of succor as those who had just flung their prayer for aid broadcast on the wings of the wind.