It was Ding-dong’s “wireless alarm” clanging out the call for Goat Island.
“On the jump! Run like a jack-rabbit now, Ding!” cried Nat excitedly. “This may be news of the rascal!”
But it was not; however, it was news of a still more astonishing nature, and, so far as the boys were concerned, almost as gratifying, dearly as they would have loved to catch Sartorius—or Minory, as we must now call him. Nat and Joe, who had followed Ding-dong to the wireless shed, bent over him while he answered the call and then switched to his receiving instruments.
“It’s the fishing steamer, Hattie and Jane,” he explained hastily. “You know, Capt. Eli Thompson’s boat, the one that collects fish from the fleet. She carries wireless so that she can get quotations and instructions from her owners even at sea.”
He broke off, and as the dots and dashes began to beat into his ears from the Hattie and Jane, he wrote swiftly with nervous, flying fingers.
As they bent over him with open mouths and wide eyes, Nat and Joe burst into a joyous “whoop!” of delight as they read the message Joe’s pencil transcribed on the pad.
“Your motor boat, Nomad, found drifting. No one on board. Are you all right?—Thompson, S. S. Hattie and Jane.”
“Gee! I’ll bet the captain thought we were all murdered or something!” cried Joe, gripping Nat’s shoulder, while Ding-dong sent back a reassuring message.
“Hush!” cried Nat. “Here’s more coming.”
“Hawser has been cut. How can you explain?”