THE DRAB BOAT SHOWS HER NOSE
"You keep off!" snarled Jasper, drawing back on the defensive, holding
the wire-nippers so as to use them in defending himself.
But, if the young captain of the "Restless" knew any fear, at such
moments, he didn't permit others to see it. He neither stopped nor
swerved. Ducking in under Jasper's extended right arm, Tom closed with
the fellow, grappling.
"Confound ye! I'll have to throw ye over into the water!" growled
Jasper, fighting for a hold around the boy's waist and behind his
back. But Halstead fought to break the grip, at the same time
yelling:
"Hank! Here, mighty quick!"
Jasper fought, trying to force the young commander to the rail. He had
half succeeded when Hank Butts raced on deck. Hepton, the other guard,
who had been lounging in the engine room, was right behind Butts. Both
of them raced to reach the struggling pair. Hank caught Jasper at the
waist-line, while Hepton took a hold at Jasper's neck, forcing the
fellow back.
Then Tom sailed into the melee with renewed energy. Jasper was a
powerfully-built fellow, but the three were too many for him. They
tripped Jasper, throwing him to the deck, and Hepton sat upon his
comrade's chest.
"Halstead! You others! What does this violence mean?"
Powell Seaton shouted the question sternly. He had been disturbed by
the racket and now stood amidships.
"Get him over, face down," panted Tom. "We'll make sure of the fellow
before we begin to explain. Hank, run for a pair of handcuffs!"
Butts was up and off like a shot, wholly liking the nature of his
errand.
"Halstead!" raged Mr. Seaton. "I insist upon an answer."
"It's a case of sea-bullying--that's what it is," growled Jasper.
"It's an outrage."
"Hepton," warned the charter-man, "get up off of Jasper's chest. Let
him go."
"Don't you do it," countermanded Tom Halstead. "It won't be safe. This
fellow is a snake in the grass. I caught him at his tricks."
Hepton had acted undecidedly for a moment. Now, he concluded to stand
by the young captain.
In a trice Hank was back. Now the three assailed Jasper, rolling him
over on his face. Tom Halstead, himself, fitted the handcuffs.
"Take the wheel, Hank, until I'm through with this," panted Tom,
leaping up from the treacherous guard. The locked wheel was now
steering the "Restless" over an erratic course, but Hank swiftly had
the boat on her true course once more.
"I insist on knowing what this shameful business means," cried Mr.
Seaton, glaring at his young skipper.
[Illustration: Tom Halstead Fitted the Handcuffs.]
"I should think you might. It's an outrage!" shouted Jasper.
"This fellow," charged young Captain Halstead, "was in the very act of
cutting the aerial wires with a wire-nipper when I caught him. Why, I
can show you the nippers he had."
Tom wheeled, to make a quick search along the deck. Jasper grinned
covertly for he had thrown the nippers overboard in the struggle.
"You see!" flared the prisoner. "He talks about nippers--but where are
they?"
"Halstead," demanded Mr. Seaton, "do you intend to obey me by setting
this man free until I've had an opportunity to investigate all sides
of this remarkable charge?"
"No, sir, I do not," rejoined Halstead, quietly though firmly.
"Do you forget that I command here?" raged the charter-man.
"Pardon me, but you don't command," retorted Skipper Tom,
respectfully. "It is true that you have this boat under charter, but I
am the captain and one of the owners, and I must handle trouble aboard
in the manner that seems best. I caught this man in a treacherous
attempt to make our errand this afternoon quite useless. Jasper stays
in irons until we reach port. I'm sorry to be so stubborn with you,
Mr. Seaton, but, just now, you've a queer idea that I'm working
against you. I must save you, sir, even from your own blindness.
Hepton, will you help me take this fellow aft?"
"Surely," nodded the guard, who, while he had not seen the start of
the trouble, much preferred believing Halstead to Jasper.
Seeing that resistance might bring him nothing but a beating, Jasper
sulkily allowed himself to be led along the deck. Down into the cabin
he was taken, there to be thrust into the starboard stateroom. Joe,
from his wireless table at the forward end of the cabin, looked up
with much curiosity.
"He was trying to snip the wires in your aerial," Halstead explained,
after turning the key in the stateroom door.
"Glad you got him, then," nodded Dawson.
Mr. Seaton had followed as far as the doorway. There he halted, well
convinced that he could not, at present, persuade the young skipper to
change his mind.
"Now, if you'll be good enough to come up to the bridge deck, Mr.
Seaton, I want to explain matters to you, sir," proposed the captain
of the "Restless."
Rather stiffly the charter-man followed. Hepton, as though to show
further good faith, took pains to remain aft.
"Do you remember the other night, when we were coming back with the
guard for Lonely Island," began Tom, in a low voice, "that we found
one of the new guards leaning well over the deck-house behind our
backs?"
"I do," nodded Powell Seaton, coldly.
"That man, sir, was Jasper. To-day, when we are out trying to trace
Anson Dalton over the open sea, I find that same fellow, Jasper,
trying to cut the parallel wires of the aerial. Why should he do that
unless he means to try to prevent our catching up with Dalton? Now,
sir, putting two and two together, doesn't it seem mighty reasonable
to suspect that Jasper overheard what we were saying the other night,
and then watched his chance to steal the papers that you and I thought
were so safely hidden in the cupboard at the bungalow? I know, Mr.
Seaton, you feel that you have some reason for suspecting us boys. In
view of what happened the other night, and again this afternoon, isn't
it a whole lot more sensible to trace your misfortunes to Jasper?"
Powell Seaton, whose daze had continued ever since starting on this
cruise, now pondered deeply, with knitted brows. At last, however, he
looked up quickly, holding out his right hand, as he exclaimed:
"Halstead, I begin to believe that I have been too hasty and
suspicious. I have hated myself for distrusting any of you boys, and
yet----"
"And yet," smiled Tom, "you are beginning to feel that there is not as
much reason for suspecting us as there is for believing that the guilt
of a mean theft lies at someone else's door."
"I beg you to forgive me, Halstead, you and your mates. But I hardly
know what I am thinking or saying. My mind is in too deep a turmoil."
"We'll forget it, Mr. Seaton," continued Halstead, as he pressed the
other's hand. "_I_ can, easily, and I hope you'll do your best to
believe that you can trust us as fully as others have done."
"You may just as well come forward, Hepton," hailed Captain Tom, a few
moments later. "And I want to thank you for the way you stood by me
when I needed help so badly."
"Ever since we've been at the island I've felt that I didn't believe
any too much in that man Jasper," muttered Hepton. "He has been acting
queer some of the time."
"How?" asked Mr. Seaton.
"Well, for one thing, he always wanted the night guard duty. And he
growled at taking the porch or the dock. What he wanted to do was to
roam off about the island by himself. Whenever he came back he wanted
to sit in your sitting-room, at the bungalow, and the fellow scowled
if some of the rest of us showed any liking for staying in that
sitting-room."
"What do you make of that, sir?" asked Captain Halstead, looking
significantly at Powell Seaton.
"It sets me to thinking hard," replied that gentleman, gravely.
Hepton glanced with natural curiosity from one to the other. Then,
finding that he was not to be enlightened as to what had happened
ashore, he soon stepped aft again.
"Here's what you want to know, I reckon," announced Joe, in a low
voice, as his head bobbed up out of the motor room. In one hand he
held a slip of paper on which he had just taken down a message.
"Twenty miles north of us is the Langley Line freighter, 'Fulton.'
She's headed this way, and coming at fourteen knots."
Skipper Tom received the paper, studying the position and course as
Joe had jotted them down.
"The Langley boats run to Rio Janeiro, don't they?" asked Halstead.
"Yes, and every boat of that line carries a wireless installation now,
too," Joe continued. "She's the only boat that answered my hail."
"Take the new course, Hank," called the young skipper to the boy at
the wheel, and rattled it off. The "Restless" swung around to a nearly
northerly course.
"At her speed, and ours, it needn't be many minutes before we sight
the 'Fulton,'" judged Halstead. "Hank, you keep the wheel. I want a
chance to handle my glasses."
With the marine binoculars in his hand Skipper Tom soon began to sweep
the horizon.
"There's what the wireless did for us," he chuckled to Mr. Seaton.
"Without our electrical wave we wouldn't have known, for sure, that
there was a Rio boat in these waters this afternoon. And, but for
getting the 'Fulton's' position and course by wireless, we'd have
swept by to the eastward, away out of sight of the freighter."
Within a few minutes more the young skipper, by the aid of his
glasses, got a glimpse of a steamship's masts. A few minutes later the
upper works of her high hull were visible.
"That's the 'Fulton.' I know the Langley type of freighter build,"
Halstead explained, eagerly. "We'll soon be close enough to see her
name-plate through the glass. And--oh!--by Jove!"
Tom waved the glasses with a flourish, pointing, then handed them to
Powell Seaton.
"Look right over there to the north-westward, sir, and you'll make out
that drab-hulled seventy-footer. She's just coming into sight."
"I see her," nodded Mr. Seaton.
Captain Halstead took the glasses again, studying both the
seventy-footer and the freighter intently, judging their relative
speeds and positions.
"Dalton, or his friend, Lemly, has nicely calculated the drab boat's
run," declared the young skipper of the "Restless," "Dalton's craft is
in fine position to stop the freighter. But we'll reach the 'Fulton'
first, and by some minutes, too, sir. The drab boat looks like a good
one, but I believe we're a shade faster in the stretch."
"What are we going to do when we overhaul both craft?" wondered Powell
Seaton, aloud.
"Why, sir, it will be easy enough to make the 'Fulton's' captain
refuse to take any such passenger as Dalton."
"How?" demanded Mr. Seaton.
"Just inform the 'Fulton's' captain that Anson Dalton is a fugitive
from justice. If you do that, the freighter's captain isn't going to
take any chances on getting into subsequent trouble with Uncle Sam.
The captain will simply decline to receive him as a passenger on the
high seas."
Powell Seaton looked very cheerful for a moment. Then a look of dark
doubt crossed his face.
"That will be all right, Halstead, unless it happens that the captain
of the 'Fulton' is a man on the inside of some official affairs down
in Brazil. If that be so, then your freighter's captain may recognize
Dalton as a man of consequence--one to be served at all hazards. For,
if a steamship captain of the Langley line must be careful to stand
well with the United States authorities, he must also be no less
careful to keep in the good graces of some of the cliques of Brazilian
officers. So what if Dalton goes aboard the freighter, and her captain
sends us a derisive toot of his whistle?"
Tom Halstead's face showed his instant uneasiness.
"If that turns out to be the case, sir," he whispered, "you've lost
your last chance to stop Anson Dalton. He goes to Brazil with all the
papers for locating the diamond mine, and you and your syndicate
friends lose the whole big game!"