Captain Andrews spun his wheel over and prepared to bear down on the light, but as he drew up close to it a bewildered look passed over his face. At the same instant Jack spoke:
“Isn’t there something rather odd about that light, captain?”
“Just what I was thinking, lad. It’s low down in the water and—by the great horn spoon! They’ve fooled us. That light’s nothing more than a lantern set adrift in a bait tub!”
And so it was. The wily party on board the Tarpon had certainly played a successful trick on their pursuers. Extinguishing their own stern light, they had set the lantern on a bait tub, dropped it overboard and cast it loose to drift at its own sweet will.
“So, for the last three hours, we’ve been following a will o’ the wisp!” groaned Jack dismally.
“Looks that way,” agreed the captain. “Consarn it all, we might have known that they’d be up to some such trick as that—such a shipload of pirates.”
He shoved back his cap and scratched his head.
“It’s a game of blind-man’s buff from now on, lads,” he said; “do you want to take a chance?”
“While there’s one left we’ll take it,” declared Jack stoutly.
“I wonder how far astray that old tub led us,” mused Tom a few minutes later, when they were once more on their course.