Motor Matt's Defiance; or, Around the Horn

by Stanley R. Matthews

In some manner the five men had contrived to lash themselves to the keel of their boat. They saw how gallantly the king of the motor boys and his friends were trying to rescue them, and waved their arms encouragingly. They must have shouted, too, although their voices were lost in the bedlam of sounds that surrounded them.

Matt, being forward of the conning tower, came near the overturned boat first. He had his weighted rope coiled in his hand, but did not cast it immediately. He was holding back until the next wave should lift the submarine. At that time the five men would be in the trough, and this would give him a "downhill" cast.

Dick preferred not to wait. His line flew out, but was caught by the fierce wind and twisted from the hands that were stretched to grasp it.

The next moment the Grampus was lifted high, and Matt swung the wrench. The rope uncoiled in his hand, was caught by one of the men on the forward part of the wreck, and there was a cable stretched between the two boats. But what happened during the next minute was hardly expected.

As the submarine poised on the crest of the wave, her propeller was out of the water, and racing; then, as the wave rushed on, the Grampus fell away in the trough, rolling her deck plates under. The wreck was lifted, and the pull of the line and the motion of the sea threw it over almost on top of the submarine.

The wooden hulk struck the iron plates a tremendous blow. All three of the boys had a narrow escape. Had the Grampus delayed two seconds in taking the windward roll, they would have been crushed under the impact of the two grinding hulls.

The submarine, however, righted just in the nick of time. Two of the men on the wreck were thrown off. Glennie managed to catch one of them, and Dick laid hold of the other.

This left three still on the boat's bottom, with only Matt to deal with the situation. Quick to think, the king of the motor boys flung the second of the two ropes he had brought with him. It was caught, and two of the men fastened themselves to it. The other man had already lashed the first line about his waist.

As the Grampus plowed her way onward, placing a rapidly widening distance between herself and the wreck, the three men flung themselves into the water.

Glennie, although busy with his steering, with his signals to the engine room, and with his work of holding the man he had grabbed from the wreck, contrived to let Carl and Speake know that they were to haul in on Matt's two lines.