“She looks harmless enough,” he muttered, between his teeth. “Pshaw! There’s only a couple of boys aboard. But it did give me a start for a moment.” And he slapped a hand at his jacket pocket.
“He’s taking long chances, if he did but know it,” said Harvey, as the big sloop came about after a tack close in shore. “That boat cannot more than clear those ledges by an inch, if it does that. It’s a regular stone field where he’s sailing. The channel here winds like a cow-path in a pasture. However, if he can clear there, we can, so we’ll begin to crowd him.”
It was no easy matter now to close in on a boat beating across the thoroughfare and not arouse suspicion. To follow him, tack by tack, and point so as to head him off every time he went about, must inevitably put him on his guard long before the time came to strike, and might even allow him, by clever sailing, to slip by.
With his cap pulled down over his eyes, so that the stranger could not by any chance identify him as the youth he had knocked down in the pasture the night of the fire, and his head bent low, Jack Harvey watched the man’s every move, and calculated every inch of the way.
“Three more tacks will bring him up to us,” he said. “And there’s shoal water to starboard and some ledges just beyond them. He’s got to meet us about in that spot,” and Harvey laid his own course according to his calculation and held to it steadily.
It must have served to allay the man’s suspicions, if he still had any, but now, as he came about on the third tack, he viewed the oncoming Surprise with anger.
“Keep away, there!” he cried, in a fierce, violent tone. “Keep off! Can’t you see you’re going to foul me if you don’t keep off?”
“Ready to jump, now, Joe,” said Harvey, in a low voice. “I’m going to run him down. It’s the only way to be sure, though it may wreck us.
“Fellows,” he called, softly, to the boys below, “all ready, now. You know what you’ve got to do the moment she strikes.”
The man at the wheel had risen to his feet, and he shook one fist threateningly, while his other hand clutched the wheel, throwing his sloop off as far as he could.