of the storm’s power. “The boat could really have gotten banged up
against the float if we had tied it up where it was before!”
“Do you think it’ll be safe where it is now?” Sandy asked anxiously.
“Oh, a little wind and water won’t bother a good boat,” Jerry answered.
“After all, it was made for wind and water! Still....” He scowled and
shook his head doubtfully.
“Still what?” Sandy said with alarm. “Is there something wrong with the
way we left it?”
“Not really,” Jerry said. “I’m just worried about one thing. We’re not
tied to a permanent mooring, the way the other boats around here are.
That means that we might drag anchor in a storm as bad as this one, and
if we happen to drag into deep water where the anchor can’t reach the
bottom, the boat could drift a long ways off until it hooked onto
something again. And there’s always the chance that it could get washed
up on the rocks somewhere, first!”
With this unhappy thought in mind, the boys stared out the window for
some time in silence as the storm continued unchecked. Finally, knowing
that worry couldn’t possibly help, and that a good night’s sleep would
prepare them to meet whatever the morning would bring, they turned out
the lights and went to bed.
But, for Sandy, bed was one thing—sleep was another. Although Jerry
managed to drop off to slumber in no time, Sandy lay a long time awake
staring at the shadows of the tossing tree on the ceiling of the hotel
room.
His mind was full of the events of the crowded day. It had been quite a
day, starting with the ride in his uncle’s sports car, and proceeding to
the new boat and learning to sail. Then the mysterious man on the
island, keeping guard with his ever-present rifle, and concluding with a
night of powerful storm. He reviewed all this, and mixed with his
recollection his new worries about the safety of his boat. A series of
images crowded his mind—a vision of the smart sloop lying smashed
against some rocky piece of shore was mingled with a memory of the
pleasures of his first day of sailing; and somewhere, behind and around
all of his thoughts, was the unpleasantly frightening memory of the man
with the gun, waiting on his hermit’s island.
All of this mingled in his mind with the sound of the storm until Sandy
slipped into an uncertain, restless sleep—a sleep filled with vague,
shadowy dreams, connected only by a sense that somewhere, something was
wrong.
CHAPTER SIX
Something Lost—Something Found!
The next morning, when Sandy and Jerry awoke, the storm that had lashed
Cliffport had vanished as if it, too, had been a bad dream.
Cliffport’s Main Street, which fronted the bay, was washed clean, and
sparkled in the bright morning light. The bay waters themselves even
looked cleaner than before, freshly laundered blue and white, with
silver points of sunlight sprinkled over their peaceful surface. It was,
in short, a perfect sailing day, and the boys could hardly wait to get
down to the boat yard to see if the sloop had ridden the storm at
anchor.
They dressed hurriedly in their sailing clothes—blue jeans, sneakers and
sweat shirts—and bolted breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. Then, sea
bags slung over their shoulders, they raced down the street to the
Cliffport Boat Yard, rounded the corner of the main shed and, at the
head of the gangway, came to a stop.
Sandy felt a sick, sinking feeling as he scanned the mooring area,
searching vainly for a sight of his sloop. But where she had ridden at
anchor the night before, there was only a patch of calm blue water.
It hardly seemed possible that she wasn’t there. The storm, on this
bright, sunny morning, seemed never to have happened. Other boats rode
peacefully at their moorings, apparently untouched by the night’s wild
work. Life in the boat yard and on the bay went on as if nothing had
occurred. But Sandy felt as if it were the end of the world.
Slowly and silently, the boys walked down the gangway to where their
dinghy lay like a turtle, unharmed. They anxiously scanned the bay on
all sides, searching for a mast that might be theirs, but to no avail.
Then Jerry straightened up and clapped Sandy on the shoulder.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s no use standing here moping. The only thing
to do now is to take out the dinghy and start to hunt.”
They launched the dinghy, put out the stubby oars, and rowed away from
the float.
“Where do we look first?” Sandy asked.
“We’ll just go the way the wind went,” Jerry said. “Luckily, the storm
came from the mainland and blew out to sea. That means there’s a good
chance that the boat didn’t pile up on the shore. Of course, there are a
lot of islands out there, and plenty of rocks, but there’s a lot more
open water. With any luck we’ll find her floating safe and sound,
somewhere out in the bay. I don’t think she could have gone too far
dragging that anchor.”
They headed down the channel, taking occasional side excursions around
some of the small islands whenever they saw, on the other side, a mast
that could be theirs. But none of the boats they found was the right
one. The hot sun made rowing even the light cockleshell of the dinghy
unpleasant work. Sandy paused at the oars and pushed back his cowlick,
then wiped his perspiring brow. He was beginning to fear that he would
never again see his trim new sloop—unless he was to see it lying
shattered on one of these rocky islands. Then, with dogged
determination, he picked up his oars once more and bent his back to the
task of rowing.
Once or twice they asked passing sailors if they had seen an unattended
sloop out of the mooring areas, but though everyone offered sympathy and
promised to help if they happened to see it, none had any information to
offer.
The morning wore on slowly as Sandy and Jerry pulled farther and farther
away from the mainland, exploring every possible hiding place the bay
had to offer.
By noon, Sandy’s spirits were at low ebb, and he was beginning to wonder
how he would tell his Uncle Russ the bad news. Then, almost tipping the
unsteady dinghy, Jerry half rose from his seat and pointed. “Look!” he
shouted. “Over there! I think that’s her! And will you look at where she
drifted to!”
Sandy dropped the oars and turned to look at the small white sloop with
the green decks that lay quietly bobbing at anchor just outside the
entrance of the cove where, yesterday, they had been welcomed by a gun!
“Of all places to drift to,” he gasped. “It’s a darn good thing she
didn’t drift inside his cove, or she might be shot full of holes by
now!”
Then, with a lighter heart than he had felt all morning, Sandy picked up
the oars and sent the dinghy fairly flying to the side of the trim
sloop.
“From now on,” he said, “sleeping bags and air mattresses or not, we’re
sleeping on board until we get a permanent mooring for this boat near
home!” Relieved and happy, Sandy climbed on board as Jerry tied the
dinghy to the stern.
“I’ll go below to get the sails out,” Sandy said, “while you unship the
boom and get the rigging ready.”
He opened the hatch cover and slid back the doors, then stepped down
into the little cabin. As he started forward to the sail lockers, he had
a sudden, odd feeling that something was wrong, something out of place;
a strange notion that he had seen, out of the corner of his eye,
something that was not what it should have been.
Pausing to look around, he saw what had bothered him. Clamped to the
bulkhead over the port bunk was a large, oddly shaped brass pistol, like
the kind he had always imagined the old-time pirates carried. He had
never seen anything like it before—and he was almost positive that it
had not been there yesterday!
“Jerry!” he called, sticking his head out of the hatch. “Come here! I
want you to see something and tell me what you think.” As Jerry poked
his head into the cabin, Sandy gestured at the brass pistol. “Was that
thing here yesterday, or have we gotten into somebody else’s boat?”
Jerry brought his dark brows together in a frown and scratched his
crew-cut head. “I don’t think it was here. I probably would have noticed
it. But maybe we just didn’t see it. We were so busy with other things.”
“But why would Uncle Russ have left a pistol on board?” Sandy asked,
puzzled.
“He probably wouldn’t have,” Jerry said. “But he might have left one of
these. That’s a flare gun, not a regular pistol at all. You use it as a
signal of distress. It shoots a rocket. Still ... I don’t remember
seeing it. And I know that your uncle didn’t mention leaving one.”
“Well, I don’t know whether he did or not,” Sandy said, “but we’d better
make sure this is our boat before we go sailing it off. If it belongs to
that guy on the island, we could get into some pretty bad trouble if we
took it by mistake!”
As they looked for some identifying marks, an idea suddenly occurred to
Sandy. “Maybe this isn’t our boat, but one just like it, and maybe the
man with the gun was expecting it with somebody else on board! That
might explain his actions!”
“That makes sense,” Jerry said. “And in that case, we’d better find out
fast if it’s ours. Look—our boat didn’t have any name on it, and most
boats do. If this has a name, we’ll know.” He hurried to the stern to
see, and then to the bow, where some boat owners fasten name plates, but
none was to be seen.
“That doesn’t prove anything, though,” Sandy said. “But I have an idea.
Let’s look in the food locker. I remember pretty well what was in there
yesterday, and I doubt if two boats would have the identical food
supplies. One look should tell us.” He reached above the galley stove
and slid back the doors of the locker, then stepped backward as if he
had been hit.
“It’s sure not our boat,” Sandy said in hushed tones, for in the locker
there was no food at all. Instead, where food should have been, was what
appeared to be a fortune in fresh, green money!
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Million Dollars’ Worth of Trouble
Sandy and Jerry, stunned for the moment, stood in silence, gazing at the
neatly wrapped stacks of tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds and
five-hundred-dollar bills—more money than either of them had ever
dreamed of!
“I don’t know whose boat this is,” Sandy said, “but whoever he is, he
can sure afford a larger one!”
Awed by the sight of the money, Jerry reached out and slipped a
five-hundred-dollar bill from its wrapper. “I just want to look at it
for a minute,” he said. “I’ve never seen a five-hundred before!”
Sandy joined him to look at the crisp bill. “Neither have I,” he said.
Then, stooping to look closer, he took the bill from Jerry’s hand and
examined it with the most intense interest.
“Jerry!” he said, almost in a whisper. “I think we’ve found more than a
stack of money in a peculiar place! I may be mistaken, but I think this
thing is counterfeit!”
“Counterfeit!” Jerry said, with a gasp. “How can you tell, if you never
saw a five-hundred-dollar bill before?”
“Come on over into the sunlight where we can see better,” Sandy replied,
“and I’ll show you what I mean.” They moved to the rear of the little
cabin, where the sun poured in through the open hatchway cover. Sandy
held the money up to the light.
“Look at the corners,” he said, pointing to the lower right-hand corner
of the bill. “You see all those fine hair lines that make the looping,
criss-cross pattern you see on all paper money? Well, I read once that
those loops and swirls are the hardest part of a bill to counterfeit,
and if you’re on the lookout for phony money you should always look
there first. Ones or one-thousands, they’re all very complicated to
engrave. On a genuine bill the lines are sharp and clear. On a
counterfeit, they’re usually a little fuzzy, especially where two lines
cross. Look over here, right next to the five-hundred-dollar mark, for
instance.”
He pointed to where a complicated series of fine lines that came
together had made a small smear, instead of a sharp, well-defined
pattern.
“You’d never find sloppy work like that on a genuine government bill,”
Sandy said, pointing to this and to another telltale spot his sharp eyes
had uncovered.
“I see what you mean,” Jerry said. “Boy, there must be more than a
million dollars’ worth of this useless stuff in that food locker!”
“It’s not so useless to someone,” Sandy returned. “Whoever made this
stuff and is responsible for it is sure making real money out of it in
the end—and an awful lot of real money, too!”
Jerry nodded thoughtfully, then said, “Where do you suppose it’s coming
from?”
“That shouldn’t be too hard to figure out,” Sandy answered. “That man on
the island was pretty nervous about having any unexpected guests, I’d
say. I’ll bet you this whole stack of money that he’s behind the whole
thing, and that this is his boat that we’re on!”
“You must be right,” Jerry said. “From the way that he came racing down
that path with his gun yesterday, he must have been watching us all
along, yet he didn’t come to stop us until we had dropped our anchor,
lowered our sails, and were halfway in to shore in the dinghy! We should
have realized when he didn’t stop us sooner what that meant. It meant
that something funny was going on here!”
“That’s right!” Sandy agreed. “He must have been expecting somebody else
to come along in this boat—the same class and colors as ours—and he
thought that we were whoever he was expecting—until he saw us in the
dinghy! That’s why he was acting so confused and excited that he didn’t
know whether to shoot at us, or to be nice and let us get our water and
be on our way. We really caught him off guard!”
“Right,” Jerry said. “And now we’ve confused the boats the same way he
did, and we’ve caught him off guard again!”
Sandy sat looking silently at the counterfeit five-hundred-dollar bill,
frowning. Then he looked up at his friend and said, “The question now
is, what are we going to do about it? We’re pretty lucky that we weren’t
seen coming on board this boat, but do you think our luck is going to
last? I’m worried that we won’t be able to get away from here again
without being seen.”
“We haven’t got much choice in the matter, have we?” Jerry answered.
“The longer we stay here, the worse our chances will be. There’s no
telling when the man with the gun or somebody else will come out here to
do something with this money, and if they find us here....”
“I’d sure hate to cross that fellow,” Sandy agreed. “I don’t like the
way he handles that rifle of his. He looks too darn ready to use it!”
Stuffing the counterfeit five-hundred-dollar bill into his pocket, Sandy
stood up. “We’d better get going now, while we still have a chance,” he
said. “The only thing to do now is to get this bill to the police as
evidence of what we’ve found, and to put them on to this island.”
Sandy started up from the cabin but, as his head emerged from the
hatchway, he stopped dead in his tracks, for floating in a dinghy just a
few feet away was the mysterious owner of the island accompanied by two
tough-looking sailors! Sandy looked in dismay from their three faces to
the muzzles of three guns pointed directly at him!
It was not a pleasant smile that the man from the island gave him as he
said, “Well! This is quite a surprise for all of us, isn’t it? Are you
still looking for water? Or do you have a better story to entertain me
with today?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Double Blackout
Sandy tried his hardest to look unknowing and innocent, and at the same
time shocked and outraged. With the three guns aimed at him, it was not
an easy job.
“What’s the idea?” he exclaimed. “I’ve never seen anybody so ready with
a gun as you are! We were only looking for our boat. You know it looks
the same as yours. We thought for a while that this was it, but....”
“But you found out, after some thorough snooping, that it wasn’t, didn’t
you?” the man sneered. “Of course you did. It’s my boat, all right! And
you’re trespassing on it! And this is my island too, and you were
trespassing there yesterday! And if I were to shoot you, I would be
perfectly within my rights as a landowner!”
Sandy tried with difficulty to smile reassuringly. “Take it easy,
mister,” he said. “Honestly, we were just looking for our boat. It
dragged anchor in the storm last night, and when we saw yours we made a
natural mistake and thought it was ours. Okay, it isn’t. We made a
mistake, that’s all. Now if you’ll just let us apologize, we’ll get off
your private property and go looking again.”
But the man didn’t show the slightest intention of even moving his rifle
from the ready, much less of letting the boys go.
“Of course you’ll go looking again,” he said. “Looking for what you were
looking for yesterday and today. Oh, no! I hardly think I can let you
go!” Then he smiled his peculiar smile again. “What’s more,” he added,
“even if I were to let you go, I would first have to ask you to return
the money you stole—the money I see sticking out of your pocket!”
Sandy’s heart sank. There was nothing he could think of to say now, and
he could see no way out of the situation. He sank wearily to a seat in
the cockpit and sighed.
“I guess we can both stop play-acting about this trespassing thing,” he
said. He pulled the telltale bill out of his pocket and threw it on the
deck. “This is what you’ve been so upset about all along, isn’t it?”
“You’re a very bright boy,” the man with the gun said. “Far too bright,
I’m afraid. You have this whole thing figured out already, haven’t you?”
“Most of it,” Sandy admitted. “At least the parts that count. You’re
using this island to make counterfeit money, and you’re using this
sailboat to take it somewhere. That’s about all I know, but it’s enough
to get you in trouble, isn’t it, Mr.—?”
“Jones is the name,” the man said. “Yes, I would say it was quite
enough. The only mistake you’ve made is your conclusion. What you know
is enough to get _you_ in trouble—not me. In fact, I should hate to be
in as much trouble as you two boys are in right now!” Jones put down his
rifle for a moment and said, “Do you mind if I come on board my boat so
that we can discuss your difficulties in more comfort?”
Jones stepped out of the dinghy to the deck of the little sloop and
settled himself comfortably in the stern seat while his two silent
crewmen kept Sandy covered. When he was set, with his ever-present rifle
held at ready across his knees, he was followed on board by the larger
and meaner looking of the two sailors, who stationed himself beside
Jones.
“Oh, yes,” Jones repeated, “I should say that what you know is quite
enough! And, since you already have too much information to ever let you
leave here with, I’ll be happy to satisfy your immense curiosity by
giving you a little more. But why not have your friend join us on deck?”
When Jerry had come up from the cabin and was sitting beside Sandy,
Jones cleared his throat, as if he were about to give a formal speech.
“As far as you went in your thinking, you are most certainly right,” he
said. “I use this boat to transport counterfeit money which I make on my
island. I take it to a waiting freighter that meets me five miles off
shore—well beyond the legal jurisdiction of the United States
government, in international waters. The freighter takes my pretty
counterfeit money and disposes of it in foreign markets, where I get a
good price for it, and where not every bright and nosy boy is out to
make a nuisance of himself.”
Then, once again, Jones smiled his peculiar and unpleasant smile. “I
find the foreign markets most useful for disposing of items which are
too difficult to get rid of here. I expect that you will not be much
harder to dispose of than this money, when you are beyond the limits of
U.S. waters!”
Sandy looked at Jerry in silence, desperately hoping his friend would
come up with some flash of inspiration—some idea—which would help them
to get out of this situation. But Jerry was no help. For that matter,
Sandy reflected, he was not much help himself. But as long as he kept
“Jones” talking, he’d get some more information and meanwhile, perhaps,
he or Jerry might think of something.
“There’s only one thing that has me puzzled in all this,” Sandy said
therefore. “Why did you leave this boat full of money floating around
outside of the cove?”
Jones laughed. “There you have the full essence of our little comedy of
errors,” he said. “Last night’s storm probably tore more than one
hundred boats loose from their anchorages and moorings. Yours, I assure
you, wasn’t the only one that drifted a good distance, and neither was
mine!”
“Yours?” Jerry gasped. “You mean that our boat _did_ drift over this
way? And that you—?”
“I think you understand,” Jones replied. “But it wasn’t I. It was these
stupid fools who work for me. They had loaded the money on board the
boat last night before the storm. Then, when it blew up, we knew that it
was impossible to sail to the freighter until the storm had passed. They
failed to take the money out of the boat for the night, trusting to luck
that nothing would go wrong. But something did go wrong! My boat broke
loose and floated out around the point to where it is now. Your boat
drifted up to the entrance of my cove. When they came out this morning,
my assistants saw your boat, and did not see mine.”
Jones laughed a short, sharp laugh. “They actually sailed your sloop
five miles out to the freighter! Of course they discovered their mistake
when they opened the money locker and found it full of canned food!”
He looked at the sailors with disgust, then continued. “When they
realized their error, they promptly sailed back here, but by that time
you had found my boat and assumed it to be yours. When they told me
their story, I guessed at once what had happened and went to correct the
mistake before you found out about our little business. If you had only
come a half hour later, you would have found your own boat and sailed it
off in perfect safety. Unfortunately for you, you were just a little too
soon.”
“As long as you’re telling us the whole story,” Jerry said, “will you
answer a question for me? I don’t understand why you bother with
sailboats, when a power boat could do the job so much faster.”
“That’s a fair question,” Jones said. “You _are_ smart boys, aren’t you?
Well, I pride myself on using my brains, too. I use this
innocent-looking sloop for several reasons, one of which caused this
whole ridiculous mix-up. For one thing, an individual member of a
popular class of sailboat is very hard for the casual observer to
identify. This we have both seen to be true. For another thing, everyone
thinks of a sailboat as being merely a pleasure craft, and would never
suspect it of anything illegal. It can go in and out of the harbor on a
regular schedule and nobody will notice it or even realize it’s the same
boat they are seeing. Third, all power boats have to be registered and
licensed by the Coast Guard, while a sailboat is so anonymous that it
doesn’t even have to have a name. Fourth, it gives me a reason to live
on this island. To the people who stop to think of me, if they think of
me at all, I am a retired gentleman whose principal hobby is sailing,
and who lives on an island in order to get the most enjoyment out of the
sport.”
Again Jones smiled, and Sandy shivered. “It’s quite a neat setup, don’t
you agree?” Jones said. “And, with the same neatness that is a part of
my way of life, I am now going to put an end to this whole unpleasant
interruption.”
Suddenly dropping his lazy conversational manner, Jones sat upright and
pointed his rifle at Sandy. Not moving his eyes from the boys, he spoke
to the sailor who was still standing silent by his side. “We’ll have to
take them out to the freighter now. There’s nothing else to do. I’ll
decide what to do with them later on. You and Turk sail this boat and
I’ll follow in theirs. Lock them below,” he added, nodding toward Sandy
and Jerry.
For the first time since they had seen him, the sailor spoke. “Okay,” he
said. “We won’t mess it up this time.” Then, this being apparently the
longest speech of which he was capable, he shut his mouth into a thin,
hard line, and moved heavily to the boys.
Using his pistol as a goad, he poked Sandy in the ribs and motioned him
to go below. As Sandy started to take his first step down into the
cabin, the sailor shoved him roughly and sent him sprawling onto the
deck below. His head spinning, Sandy looked up to see the giant sailor
towering above him. He was conscious of an odd noise, like a strangled,
slow sobbing, far away. What was it? He had never heard such an ugly
sound in his life....
Then, as his head cleared, he realized what it was that he was hearing.
The sailor was laughing!