“The hawser cut?” shouted Nat. “Cracky! I see it all now. That fellow couldn’t run the Nomad himself and means to row ashore. He figured, though, that we might swim out to her and start in pursuit, so he cut the mooring rope and set her adrift.”
“Oh, for five minutes alone with him!” panted Joe.
“What’ll I say?” asked Ding-dong, half turning.
“Say that we will explain when we see him. Ask him if he will bring the Nomad to Goat Island. Tell him we are marooned here and will pay him well for the job.”
Ding-dong obediently rapped out the message and then switched to the receiving set again. They saw him give a reassuring nod as he wrote down on his pad:
“Will be at Goat Island within three hours. Catch light, and can spare the time. Is fifty dollars too much?”
“The old rascal!” grinned Nat, too delighted to be angry at this somewhat steep figure. “He knows he’s got us under his thumb and sees a chance to make a good wad of salvage. Tell him ‘all right,’ Ding-dong, there’s nothing else for it.”
“Satisfactory. Make all haste you can,” was flashed back, and then came “Good-byes.”
As soon as Ding-dong had grounded his instruments and taken off his head receivers there was a scene of wild jubilation in the wireless hut. The boys whooped and cheered like Indians and joined in a wild war dance.
“Whoopee!” yelled Joe, “there may be a chance of catching that old fake-whiskered cuss, after all. He’s got a good long start, but what with our wireless warnings and with the long row ahead of him, we have a fighting chance of overhauling him.”