Captain Andrews burst into the hotel a short time later like a
bombshell, scattering bell-boys and guests in his mad rush to reach Jack
and Tom, who were awaiting him in a corner of the lobby.
“If you want to catch those fellows you must come with me right away,”
he exclaimed pantingly; “they’ve gone to sea in Cap. Flinders’ motor
boat. They started half an hour ago; but if we hurry I’ll go after them
in mine, and there’s a chance we can overhaul them, or at least keep
track of them.”
Of course the reference to Captain Flinders’ motor boat was so much
Greek to Jack, but the captain would not explain any more just then.
“Don’t waste time talking,” he exclaimed; “I’ll tell you about it as we
go along. Shiver my topsails, but they’ll get away yet if we don’t
hurry.”
It was evident enough, from all this, that there was not a minute to be
lost, and Jack and Tom, who had their hats on, followed the energetic
seaman out of the hotel without an instant’s hesitation. Outside was a
row of taxicabs. Jack engaged one of these, and they started off for the
“T” wharf at a rattling speed.
As they spun along the captain explained how he had got upon the track
of the gang of rascals.
“This Captain Flinders is a regular shark,” he declared; “he’ll do
anything for money, and has a mighty bad reputation along the water
front. Well, as I was standing on the end of the Buttermilk Wharf where
he keeps his boat—the _Tarpon_, and a clipper she is, too—I saw him meet
four precious seedy-looking chaps. One looked like an old cab-driver and
the rest were as bad.
“‘What’s in the wind now?’ I thought, and as they came toward me I
slipped in behind a pile of bales, for I didn’t want Flinders to see me,
and was curious to know what he was doing with that outfit of
ragamuffins. Well, as luck would have it, they stopped just the other
side of the pile of bales, and I could hear some of what they said. I
heard enough to convince me that they were the chaps you were after, in
disguise, and then I jumped for a telephone.”
The boys fairly gasped in their eagerness to hear more.
“Were they all there?” demanded Jack.
“Well, there were four of ’em. And they’ve got the model, too. I heard
one of ’em, a chap the others called Melville, laughing about the way
they’d tricked you by sneaking out of a stable by a secret back door.”
“So the rascals were there, after all,” exclaimed Jack; “well, if that
doesn’t beat all!”
“Well, when I came back from ’phoning to you, what should I see but the
_Tarpon_ putting out into the stream. Right then and there I started for
the hotel and there’s a chance—just a chance—that we may catch ’em yet.
You see, from what I heard, they were figuring on not sailing till
to-night, but I guess they changed their minds.”
“Jumping Jupiter!” exclaimed Tom, “this is warm work with a vengeance.
You didn’t overhear them say where they were bound for, captain, did
you?”
“Yes, East Hampton, they said. But here’s the wharf. Come on, pile out.
Jack, you pay the cabman while I get the old _Sea Gull_ ready.” When the
boys joined the captain once more they found him busied over the engine
of a good-looking cabin motor boat about thirty feet in length.
“Will you be ready right away?” inquired Tom, “because if not, I guess
we ought to ’phone to Mr. Bowler. He’ll be anxious if we are missing
without any explanation.”
“All right, boys. You’ll have time for that, but hurry.”
In five minutes the boys were back, and Captain Andrews announced that
all was ready. No time was lost in casting off, and in five minutes more
the _Sea Gull’s_ bow was headed downstream. A long chase had begun, and
one that was to prove remarkable in more ways than one.
“Seems queer, doesn’t it,” remarked Jack, “to think that only a short
time ago we were sitting in the hotel, thinking we’d lost the trail for
good and all, and here we are, hot on it again, only by sea instead of
land.”
“It does,” agreed Tom, who was looking after the engine, while Captain
Andrews steered. The motor of the _Sea Gull_ was a powerful,
four-cylindered, four-cycle one, developing twenty horsepower. This made
the _Sea Gull_ unusually fast for a craft of her class, but the boys
recalled that Captain Andrews had told them that the _Tarpon_ was a
swift craft, also.
Twilight found the _Sea Gull_ well off shore, and riding a swelling sea.
Jack, who was on the lookout, was the first to sight, some five miles
ahead of them, another motor craft.
“Can that be the _Tarpon_?” he exclaimed, pointing.
“Here, take the wheel a minute while I overhaul her,” said Captain
Andrews eagerly.
He dived into the cabin and reappeared with a pair of strong binoculars.
He focused these on the distant craft, and after a brief scrutiny
announced that it was beyond doubt the _Tarpon_ that they had sighted.
“She must have had some sort of engine trouble,” he declared, “or she
would have made better time than this.”
“Can we overhaul her, do you think?” questioned Jack anxiously.
Captain Andrews shook his head doubtfully.
“Even if she had to slow down for a time she is creeping ahead now; but
maybe, if all goes well, we can keep on her track through the night. For
one thing, we know that she is bound for East Hampton, and I could find
my way there blindfolded.”
“Perhaps I could fix your engine so that it will give us a little more
speed,” volunteered Jack.
“I wish you could, lad,” responded the seaman, taking the wheel from the
boy once more.
“I’ll do what I can,” promised Jack.
He fell to work on the motor, and found that by readjusting the
carburetor he could coax more speed out of it. By this time it was dark,
and, having finished his work on the motor, Jack went forward with the
running lights. Soon they were shining out like twin jewels—red to port
and green to starboard. Then he set the stern light, and coming back
eagerly looked into the night ahead of them.
All at once through the darkness a white light flashed up and instantly
vanished, only to reappear again as the _Tarpon_ rose on a wave crest.
“So long as we keep that light in sight we are all right,” declared
Captain Andrews, and resigning the wheel to Jack, he went below to
prepare supper, which meal they ate in “relays.” Coming on deck after
his meal, Jack saw, to his astonishment, that the dancing white light
ahead of them was much closer than it had been before he went below.
This meant that they were overhauling the _Tarpon_.
“We’re creeping right up on her,” declared Captain Andrews, when Jack
mentioned this fact to him; “we ought to be alongside in half an hour if
we keep on at this gait.”
The words sent a thrill through Jack.
“That means a fight,” he said calmly, although his heart beat fast.
“That’s what it does, lad,” returned the doughty captain, “but there are
three revolvers below, and we’ve got the law on our side—don’t forget
that.”
“No, and I don’t forget that they are five to our three,” added the boy,
with a grim smile.
As they crept closer, Tom was apprised of the turn events were taking.
He was provided with a revolver, and Captain Andrews armed Jack and
himself likewise.
“I don’t approve of firearms; fists is my way of fighting,” he said.
“But we are going up against a gang of sea sharks that are desperate,
and we may have to fall back on the guns.” Silence fell on the party as
they slowly but surely crept up on the bobbing, dancing light ahead. As
they came within hailing distance Captain Andrews boomed out a hail:
“_Tarpon_, ahoy!”
But no answer was vouchsafed.
“Looks as if they are going to cut up rough,” opined the captain; “well,
there’s nothing for us to do but heave alongside and board them. You’re
not scared, Jack?”
“Not a bit. I’m too hot to get at the rascals who have caused us so much
trouble to feel scared of them.”
Captain Andrews spun his wheel over and prepared to bear down on the
light, but as he drew up close to it a bewildered look passed over his
face. At the same instant Jack spoke:
“Isn’t there something rather odd about that light, captain?”
“Just what I was thinking, lad. It’s low down in the water and—by the
great horn spoon! They’ve fooled us. That light’s nothing more than a
lantern set adrift in a bait tub!”
And so it was. The wily party on board the _Tarpon_ had certainly played
a successful trick on their pursuers. Extinguishing their own stern
light, they had set the lantern on a bait tub, dropped it overboard and
cast it loose to drift at its own sweet will.
“So, for the last three hours, we’ve been following a will o’ the wisp!”
groaned Jack dismally.
“Looks that way,” agreed the captain. “Consarn it all, we might have
known that they’d be up to some such trick as that—such a shipload of
pirates.”
He shoved back his cap and scratched his head.
“It’s a game of blind-man’s buff from now on, lads,” he said; “do you
want to take a chance?”
“While there’s one left we’ll take it,” declared Jack stoutly.
“I wonder how far astray that old tub led us,” mused Tom a few minutes
later, when they were once more on their course.
“Impossible to say,” said the captain, “but a light tub like that would
drift fast, and their trick will have given those lubbers a big lead on
us.”
“Not much doubt of that, I’m afraid,” agreed Jack; “but we may as well
keep right on now. Possibly we’ll get track of them at East Hampton.”
With only this hope to buoy them through the long night hours, the trio
clung to the marine trail. All of them were too excited to sleep and so
they took turn and turn about at steering, attending to the engine and
keeping a lookout.
As the first gray warning of dawn came on the eastern horizon, Captain
Andrews consulted his log, compass and charts. He declared that they
were not far from East Hampton, and that unless something had happened
to the _Tarpon_ during the night, she must have landed her passengers
there. This was a bitter pill to swallow, but the boys kept hoping
against hope while the light grew stronger.
But as the surrounding sea became visible in the summer’s dawn, a cry of
delight broke from three throats simultaneously.
Bobbing up and down on the swells not half a mile off lay the _Tarpon_.
She was motionless, except for the action imparted by the waves, and it
was evident that something was the matter with her engines.
“Guess they tried to run so fast during the night that they overheated
them,” declared Captain Andrews, as he gazed at the other craft.
He turned his wheel, and the _Sea Gull_ began to head toward the
_Tarpon_. At first it appeared that they were not observed, but the next
instant they found out differently. Something sang through the air above
Captain Andrews’ head.
Jack saw a flash and a puff of smoke from one of the portholes of the
_Tarpon_’s raised deck cabin, and a few seconds later came the report of
a rifle. Then, borne clearly across the water, came a megaphoned threat:
“Keep off, or it will be the worse for you.”
Captain Andrews snatched up the _Sea Gull’s_ megaphone. His bronzed face
was flushed with rage, and his voice shook with suppressed fury as he
bellowed back:
“You infernal scoundrels, what do you mean by firing at us? Are you
going to let us board you and give up that model, or do we have to make
you?”
“Oh, run along and play,” came back from the _Tarpon_, in a voice which
the boys recognized as Jake Rook’s.
“You keep away from us if you know what’s good for you,” came back in
another voice.
“By Neptune, boys,” growled Captain Andrews, “it kind of looks as if
they had the upper hand of us after all. I don’t see how we can board
them as things are now. It’s no use sticking our heads in a hornet’s
nest, and that’s what we’d be doing if——Hello! They are moving again;
guess they’ve got their engine fixed. Well, we can stick to their heels,
and if they run into a town we can arrive close enough to them to have
them arrested.”
“But will they make for a town now that we are so close on their
tracks?” wondered Jack.
“Isn’t it more likely they’d land along the coast some place, where
there was no risk of encountering the authorities?”
“Jove, lad, I don’t know but what you’re right. Well, all we can do is
to tag along and watch our chance.”
“Look, one of them is coming out of the cabin with a megaphone,” cried
Tom suddenly.
They watched a figure clamber up on the stern of the boat ahead and
raise the speaking trumpet.
“_Sea Gull_, ahoy!” came the hail.
“Aye! aye! what do you want with us?” bellowed back Captain Andrews, in
no amiable tone.
“It’s no use your following us. If it’s the model you are after, we
landed it last night while you were chasing that bait tub!”
If a bombshell had exploded in their midst the party on the _Sea Gull_
could not have felt a deeper sense of consternation. The long chase had
been for nothing then, and, as Jack had put it, they had indeed been
pursuing a “will o’ the wisp.”