The anchor was up in a twinkling. The sails were never spread in such time. Almost as quickly as it takes to tell it, the yacht Surprise was under way, and with Harvey at the wheel was standing out of the little harbour.
Then, as they left the glare of the fire upon the waters astern, but still flaming like a giant beacon against the sky, Harvey, with his crew about him, narrated his extraordinary adventure with the strange man, and asserted his conviction that the man was none other than the same Chambers who had fled from the island not long before.
“That is a fast boat, and we can never catch her in plain sailing,” said Allan Harding. “She is full half again as big as we, and she would sail around us a dozen times and then walk away from us without half-trying.”
“I know that,” said Harvey, “and that is just why I am so anxious to catch up with him before he gets out of the western bay into the open sea. If we don’t get him in the bay we shall lose him. Now let’s overhaul everything, and be sure that something doesn’t break just as we come to the pinch.”
There was little to be done, however, on that score; for, however carelessly they lived ashore, they had the true yachtsman’s spirit aboard the Surprise, and kept her shipshape. Then they set the club and jib topsails, for there was not much air stirring, and they drew the tender up close astern, so it would drag as little as possible.
“We have one advantage,” said Harvey. “We can depend upon it, he knows enough not to try the open bay and sail down toward the Gull Islands. The first part of the way is clear sailing enough, but when you get down just off the islands you come to the shallows, and a man has to follow the marks to get clear and safely out to sea. And then, too, the alarm is going to be sent out just as soon as a boat from the village can get over to the mainland. They won’t lose any time about that,—and Chambers is sharp enough to know it. He knows the whole bay down below there will be alive with boats, just as soon as they get the news wired down to them.
“Depend upon it, Chambers will try to fool them. I think he will come through the Thoroughfare at this eastern end of Grand Island, which he must have studied out on the charts. He will not dare to try the Thoroughfare to-night, however, and if we can only beat down to somewhere below the Thoroughfare to-night we shall be well to windward of him in the morning, and he will think we are a boat coming in from outside, while he will still be beating into the wind, if it holds from the south’ard, the way it is blowing now.”
“That’s right,” said Joe Hinman. “He cannot make the passage out through the Thoroughfare in the night, unless he knows the way better than I think he does. It is a bad run in the dark, even for a man that was born around here. We have done it only once or twice ourselves.”
“You fellows turn in now, all but Tim,” said Harvey, “and get some sleep. We two can run her for awhile. I’ll call you, Joe, in about an hour or two, to handle her while I get forty winks, but, mind, everybody will be called sharp the minute we clear Tom’s Island, for no knowing what we shall see then at any minute. Chambers will lie up in Seal Cove for an hour or two, I reckon, if he has got down that far. I only wish I was sure of it. We’d go ashore and take a run across the island and catch him napping—
“By the way, George,” exclaimed Harvey, “how do you feel? It’s mighty lucky you happened to be taken with that colic in the night, just at the right time, and that I started out to rouse up old Sanborn to get some ginger for you. All this would never have happened if it hadn’t been for you.”