ANOTHER ACCIDENT
Grace and the singer were clinging to each other in the main cabin as
Mr. Potter and Larry came down.
“Oh, father! what is it?” cried Grace. “Are we going to sink? Are we in
danger?”
“Sink? No; not a bit of it!” exclaimed the millionaire stoutly. “The
_Elizabeth_ isn’t the kind of a girl to go back on her friends that
way. We’re in some difficulties, but they’ll soon be over, and we’ll
have a fine run through the storm.”
As he spoke there was a thunder of water on the deck of the craft, and
a big wave coming aboard made the boat tremble from stem to stern.
Larry and Mr. Potter were almost thrown from their feet, and had the
woman and girl not been sitting down on one of the leather couches they
would have been tossed from one end of the cabin to the other.
“Oh! We are sinking!” cried Madame Androletti. “My poor boy! Out in
this storm! We are sinking!”
“Nothing of the sort!” exclaimed Mr. Potter.
“Larry, are we in danger?” cried Grace. “Is daddy saying we are safe
just to make us not worry?”
“As far as I know we are perfectly safe,” answered the young reporter.
“For that matter, we are not far from a harbor, and, if the storm gets
too bad, we can put in there.”
“Of course,” agreed the millionaire, “but we are not going to. We are
going to catch those fellows and get back the stolen boy! It was some
of the kidnappers, Madame Androletti, who I believe cut us adrift. Then
came this storm, and one of our motors had to go out of commission just
at the wrong moment. But don’t worry. We’ll pull through all right yet,
and we’ll have your boy, before many hours--that is, if he’s aboard the
boat we’re after, as I believe he is.”
“Oh, and if he should _not_ be!” murmured the singer. “I do not think I
could stand another disappointment!”
“We’ll find him!” cried Larry, with a confidence he did not altogether
feel.
“Hadn’t you ladies better go to your staterooms, and lie down?”
suggested Mr. Potter.
“Oh, no, daddy, let us stay here,” pleaded Grace. “It’s so lonesome to
be shut up all by yourself when there’s a storm. Let us stay here.”
“Very well,” he assented. “Perhaps it will be better so. I’ll have the
cook get us up something to eat--some coffee--that is, if we can drink
it without spilling it all over us.”
Indeed, this would probably be the case, for the yacht was pitching and
tossing at really alarming angles. Now she would be up on the crest
of a mountain of water, and, a moment later she would slide down the
inclined side of it, into a valley of foam. Again, she would pitch from
side to side like a cork in a whirlpool.
“Look after the ladies, Larry, until I see how things are going,”
directed Mr. Potter, as he went to rouse the cook. But there was no
need of this, as every man in the crew had been up some time, doing
all he could for the safety of the craft, the cook included. Soon the
appetizing smell of coffee came to the cabin, though how the cook made
it in his pitching and tossing galley was a mystery.
“We’re doing very well,” Mr. Potter came back to report, after having
paid a visit to the engine-room. “The stalled motor, which blew out a
cylinder gasket, will soon be repaired, and we can make better speed.”
As it was, the _Elizabeth_ was just able to hold her own in the storm.
She was a large and powerful motorboat, and, even running at half
speed, she was quite fast. But it was no ordinary blow that she found
herself in after the cable had been cut.
“It shows how desperate they are, and that we are after the right
parties,” decided Larry, speaking of the kidnappers.
“But how do you suppose they knew we were after them?” asked Grace,
when, during a little lull in the storm, they could eat and drink
without having to hold on to something solid with one hand.
“Oh, they are like most criminals, suspicious, I suppose,” answered the
young reporter. “Then, too, we have been making any number of inquiries
about them, and this yacht is one that easily attracts attention.
Once it was known that those aboard the _Elizabeth_ were looking for
a suspicious-looking craft, those on that same craft, if they had a
guilty conscience, would hurry to get away.”
“And they’ll get away as far and as fast as they can,” spoke Mr.
Potter. “If it hadn’t been for this storm, I believe we could have
caught them, even after they cut us adrift. As it is, we are going to
have no end of trouble.”
Madame Androletti was very nervous, and at every pitch and toss of
the yacht she started up as though she feared they were going to the
bottom. The others did all they could to reassure her, but it was plain
that the strain of the last two months was telling on her.
The storm seemed to grow worse, instead of better, as the early hours
of morning ticked themselves off. The wind blew a gale, and the thunder
and lightning were incessant. The rain, which had not been severe at
first, rapidly increased in violence, until it fairly swept the deck in
a deluge, adding to the work of the waves.
But the downpour served one good purpose. It was so heavy at times that
it actually beat down the crests of the billows, and that made the boat
ride a little easier.
Meanwhile the engine-room force had been working hard on the disabled
motor. It was no small task, at best, to replace the gasket, which
is like a big washer, designed to make a gas-tight joint between the
cylinder and the head. To work in cramped quarters in a storm, with the
boat almost standing one on his head, it was all the engineer and his
assistants could do.
But they finally accomplished it. The motor had been run at top speed
during this time, and now, with some of the strain taken off it, when
its mate resumed duty the craft might do better.
“Well, Mr. Potter, we are going to try and run with both motors now,”
the engineer reported, about five o’clock that morning. What a long
night it had seemed since twelve!
“Very well,” replied the millionaire. “Take it easy at first.”
Slowly the speed of the _Elizabeth_ increased, as both powerful
machines spun the screw around, and then, though the storm was not any
less, the craft, cutting through the waves, rode on a more even keel.
“Now I think we’d all better try to get some rest,” suggested Mr.
Potter. “It will soon be light enough to see, and we will watch for the
boat we’re after.”
They went to their staterooms, but not to sleep. Soon the gray dawn of
the November morning shone through the ports, and, with the advent of
daylight, the rain, thunder and lightning ceased. But the wind still
kept up.
It was on a wild and desolate scene that our friends gazed when they
ventured on deck after a hasty breakfast. The big waves of Lake Huron
seemed to make that body of water an ocean, rather than a lake. It was
very clear, for the storm had blown away all the mists.
“Not a boat in sight,” remarked Larry, as he peered through a
telescope, which he steadied against one of the wireless masts. “I
wonder which way they went.”
“They must have run before the storm,” decided Mr. Potter. “I think
if we keep on our present course we will sight them sooner or later,
unless they have----”
He stopped, for Madame Androletti was coming on deck. Even though she
did not love the water, she was a good sailor, as indeed were all on
board the _Elizabeth_.
“Were you going to say unless they had gotten too far ahead, and have
gone ashore?” asked Larry, as he saw the singer go over to talk to
Grace.
“No, Larry, I was going to say ‘unless they have sunk,’ but I don’t
like even to think that,” answered Mr. Potter. “They must be ahead
of us, though with an inferior boat I don’t see how they could have
outspeeded us. Still, they had a good start, and the wind helped them.
Then, too, we were at half speed part of the time.”
The storm was beginning to blow itself out. Every hour saw a let-up in
the violence of the wind, and when that died away it would mean that
the waves would begin to subside. But it was plain the swell would not
go down that day.
The _Elizabeth_ forged ahead, pitching and tossing. But the passengers
were getting used to that now, and rather enjoyed it. The stanch craft
had not leaked a drop.
All the morning, by turns, a lookout was kept, and the waste of waters
was swept by a powerful glass. But only a few large lake steamers were
seen, and Larry knew it was none of these of which they were in search.
He wanted to see a small motorboat, the dingier and more dilapidated
the better, for that, he believed, would contain the kidnappers and the
stolen boy.
It was just after the midday meal had been served that there came a
sudden jar to the _Elizabeth_.
“What’s that?” cried Mr. Potter, who was on deck with Larry.
“It felt as though we hit something,” said the young reporter. “I’ll go
below and find out.”
But there was no need, for, a moment later, the chief engineer came
up. On his face there was a look of trouble.
“What is it?” asked Mr. Potter.
“That gasket again. Two of ’em this time, and I haven’t another spare
one aboard. We’ll have to run at half speed, or else put back for some.”
“Well, run at half speed. It’s the best we can do,” replied the
millionaire.