The motorboat Ajax was chugging over the heaving water at good speed, but as far as the eyes of either of her occupants could see, she might have been driving straight into the utter desolation of a vast ocean, for not an object was in sight.
The wind had again taken up that nerve-racking moaning and groaning sound, as of an unseen giant in distress, and the spray from the crests of the waves blew in the faces of the two young men, as they crouched down behind the shelter of the half-cabin.
It seemed as though the storm had begun, had halted in its purpose, or had gone off momentarily in some other direction, and was now headed back, to sweep destruction down on those aboard the Mary Ellen, and the two in the motorboat.
But where was the Mary Ellen?
That was a question Russ and Mr. Sneed asked of themselves over and over again as they drove into the very teeth of the storm. They had to head into it, as in the small boat no other course would have been safe. Fortunately the Ajax was built dory-fashion, with high bow and stern, after the pattern of the skiffs in which the fishermen of the New Foundland banks go out in heavy weather.
"What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Sneed, as Russ increased the speed of the engine, so that the small craft fairly tore up the inclined hills of green waters, which the waves represented, and slid down them with sickening speed on the other slope.
"I'm going to keep on until I find her—find the schooner," Russ said, grimly. "That's all we can do. But I can't understand why they don't show a light."
"Maybe they're having troubles of their own," suggested the actor.
"Well, they could shout, so as to let us know where to steer," Russ went on, rather provoked.
"We could do that ourselves," Pepper Sneed said.