“They’re heading in toward land,” cried Jack excitedly.
“Yes; I guess they realize that they can’t shake us and are going to land and make a run for it,” decided Captain Andrews. “Great sea serpents, but they are putting on speed!”
The Tarpon certainly was flying. Great jets of spray shot up on each side of her bow, and the roar of her motor could be heard like the incessant discharge of a whole battery of gatling guns.
Jack sprang down to Tom’s side at the Sea Gull’s engine. He tinkered with the carburetor and speeded up both spark and gasolene supply. Like an arrow from a bow the Sea Gull sprang forward gallantly. Every timber in her shook under the vibration. But like a greyhound after a rabbit, she hung tenaciously in the wake of the Tarpon.
It was a marine race, filled with the keenest excitement. Jack’s heart pounded. The blood rushed hotly through his veins. With burning eyes he straightened up from the engine and gazed ahead. The distance between the two crafts was still the same, the Tarpon maintaining her lead.
“Can’t you get any more speed out of her?” almost groaned Captain Andrews. “If once they reach that coast and land, we’ll have a tough job getting them again.”
“I’m afraid that I can’t do any more with the motor,” responded Jack; “it’s heating up now, and if I force it any more it may stick altogether.”
The coast toward which both boats were heading at racing speed was a wild and desolate-looking stretch of beach, with cliffs towering up to some height from a rocky base, and pine woods and hills on top.
“Like as not old Flinders knows just where he is heading for,” said Captain Andrews, with some uneasiness; “but I don’t like the look of this at all. See those rocks and that shoal water all about us. We may run aground any minute, and at this speed that would mean ‘good-bye, Sea Gull.’”
Jack nodded. He fully saw the dangers of navigation so close to that rocky coast. But Captain Flinders seemed to have no fears. He kept right on without reducing speed, dodging in and out of shoals incessantly. Captain Andrews, with his heart fairly in his mouth for the safety of his craft, followed his every move. He knew that the Tarpon drew more water than his craft, and that where Captain Flinders could go with safety he could follow.