Once the keel groaned and rasped on coral, and once a bough was snapped on a tree leaning far over the water by the short mast.
Then they were in open water. Would the cutter know where they went? Would she follow?
They squared away and ran, full speed, down the Sound, and with keel almost aground, shoved—literally grated their way—over a bar and into the outer waters again.
And the cutter had not followed!
She had done better! Anticipating some such double-back among the waterways, she had eased her way and lay beyond the reef. With a word of muttered anger, the captain rushed for the pilot house in the forward end of the cabin.
The small cannon on the revenue cutter spoke with its sharp bark but the phantom cruiser did not heave to. Instead her engines fairly shook her hull in their race for freedom.
Fast as she was the revenue cutter was not fast enough to overtake the other. Her gun spoke, but at a distant range and on a bad target—the tail of a flying ship without lights is no easy thing to hit in the dark!
The cutter dropped back slowly and then, sure that they were no longer in sight of her watchful crew, the hi-jackers flung their tiller hard a-starboard, heeled with the swerve and their speed, heard the grate of coral on one side, and—were again in a hidden cove!
CHAPTER XV
DISASTER!
Clearly the churns saw that, although the hi-jackers had escaped for a time, they were really trapped. The Senorita, their cruiser, if she lay where she was until dawn, must be discovered.