“He will row into some little inlet, unship his pole, maybe pull his boat up on shore and hide.”
Don Ortiga furnished the information.
“But haven’t they seen us?” demanded Nicky.
“We are low and gray and hard to see. It remains to be learned,” the captain replied. He watched for an interval while their boat with only her propeller thrash to carry a message of her direction, held on swiftly.
The ruse had failed. They could see the cutter holding a course slantwise to their own! They must have been seen in spite of the camouflaging color.
Tew was with Ortiga.
“There’s a chance—in the channel to port!” he grunted.
“Take it!”
Then began the most breathless and thrilling half hour or more that the chums had ever been through.
Swinging sharply on her heel, so to speak, their lithe greyhound doubled back into a narrow lip between two clumps of cocoanut or mangrove, it was too dark to see which they were; it seemed as though she were running smash into the land but there was a way that opened thinly before her scudding bow.