It was Ding-dong who uttered the exclamation as a sharp crack sounded in the engine room and he sprang forward to shut off the motor. An eccentric band had snapped with a report like a pistol, and the Nomad was temporarily out of commission.
Down the speaking tube came an impatient query.
“What’s up? What’s happened?”
Ding-dong shouted up a reply.
“How long will it be before you can fix it?”
“About fifteen minutes. Luckily I’ve an extra band handy.”
The stammering boy, as was usual with him in stress of circumstances, had temporarily overcome his impediment in speech.
“Bother!” exclaimed Nat in a vexed tone. And there was good reason for his impatient intonation. Bit by bit the Nomad had been creeping up on the solitary rowboat.
Hardly more than a few hundred yards now separated them, and they could see Minory, with white, anxious face, straining at his oars—as if any human power could get him beyond reach of the fast motor cruiser! Ahead of him lay an inlet meandering up among some salt marshes. It was Whale Creek, so called because a huge whale had once been stranded there.
Nat knew that at the mouth of Whale Creek lay shoals and quicksands among which the Nomad could not navigate. If they could not cut off Minory before he gained the entrance to the creek, his escape appeared certain, for the Nomad carried no dinghy and Minory had the whip hand of them in the shallow water.