Nicky, Tom and Cliff stood on the foredeck of the hi-jackers’ ship as the anchor was quietly drawn up and the engines began turning over, their twin-four cylinders thudding with little outward noise.
“Here we go!” Nicky whispered. “Off on our first piratical cruise.”
“Off to be shot,” Cliff corrected, “if that revenue cutter they spoke about ever see us.”
“They wouldn’t shoot us,” Nicky protested.
“They wouldn’t mean to,” Tom agreed. “But they will chase—and this boat will run. That means a shot across the bows and more if we don’t ‘heave to’—which this crew won’t do if they can see a chance to escape.”
“What are they ‘advertising’ for, then?” demanded Cliff. His comrades stared at him; for answer to their unspoken question he pointed upward.
Looking toward the tip of the short spar that served for a signal mast and for the radio aerial for the small receiving set with which the cabin was equipped, capable of tuning-in short wave stations and the Navy broadcasts of weather, signals, and so forth, they all saw a small electric bulb glowing finely into the dark night.
“Well—I’ll be—switched!” gasped Tom. “Now why should they show a light?”
“It’s the law—” began Nicky, but he stopped, realizing that these men, all of whom were silent but fierce-looking, obeyed no law as to lights or other rules of the seaways.
The lookout just forward of their group was staring toward the horizon as they nosed gently forward out of a small strait between a key and a section of the bay shore. He turned and made some sort of signal with a tiny, blinking flashlight in his cupped hands.