“How much’ll you give?” he demanded.
“Not a penny of blackmail, you can rest assured of that,” declared Nat warmly. “If you don’t want to do your duty as honest men, then I’m not going to pay you to do so.”
Harley did not reply but went forward and said something to Seth, who had the wheel. The course of the black motor boat was changed and she began to head in toward the shore. Nat took advantage of this opportunity to gaze astern. He hardly expected to see any sign of the Nomad, yet somehow, he was disappointed when he didn’t.
What was going to be the outcome of it all, he wondered as he rapidly ran over in his mind the events that had taken place since the afternoon before, when they had set out to answer that wireless call from the Iroquois. How little had any of them dreamed into what a strange tangle the wireless was to plunge them when Ding-dong Bell had enthusiastically enlisted them in “the cause”! For a moment or so Nat almost wished that they had never engaged in the enterprise, but before long his naturally buoyant spirits asserted themselves. He recalled the many seemingly hopeless situations in which he and his chums had been before during their adventurous careers. With such thoughts came a conviction that buoyed and strengthened his flagging spirits. Come what might, he would face it manfully and try to win out against seemingly desperate odds.
Although his head still ached with a racking pain, Nat concentrated his faculties on observing the movements of those on the speedy black motor boat. It was plain enough now that they were heading in landward, and Nat noticed with astonishment that their objective point appeared to be the foot of a blank wall of cliffs, where no sign of a landing place was visible. But, after running straight toward the land till they were not more than a quarter of a mile from the forbidding bastion of rocky escarpments, the motor craft was headed southward again, skirting along the coast.
Old Israel stood by Seth in the bow directing him, apparently, in his steering. It appeared to Nat as if the old man was looking for some familiar landmark. At last it hove in sight. Nat saw old Israel point to a lone pine tree on the summit of the cliff. It towered like a signal vane from the midst of a wind-racked tangle of scrub oak and madrone. Beneath it, the cliff dropped sheer and precipitous for a hundred and fifty feet or more.
Once this bearing had been taken, the motor boat was headed in straight for the cliff at a smart speed.
“Looks like he means to run bang into the cliff,” commented Nat to himself, as, with no abatement of speed the black craft rushed onward toward the wall of solid rock.
But, just as it appeared as if Nat’s surmise might be verified, something occurred which the boy, familiar as he was with the coast, would never have suspected to be possible. Before them loomed an opening in the cliff, rising in a horseshoe shape above the sea level. It was partially screened from seaward by some clumps of trailing bushes, but was plainly enough to be seen on close inspection.
“It’s a cave!” exclaimed Nat under his breath. “I’ve heard of such places along the coast here in the limestone cliffs, but this is the first one I’ve seen.”