[Illustration: Both Boys Lurched Backward
_Frontispiece._]
The Motor Boat Club Off Long Island
OR
A Daring Marine Game at Racing
Speed
By
H. IRVING HANCOCK
Author of The Motor Boat Club of the Kennebec,
The Motor Boat Club at Nantucket
The Motor Boat Club and the Wireless
Etc.
Illustrated
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY HOWARD E. ALTEMUS
PRINTED IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A BREATHLESS MOMENT IN THE FOG 7
II. A WHIFF OF FORTUNE 23
III. THE BUYER OF SOULS 38
IV. TOM HALSTEAD’S FIGHT AGAINST ODDS 50
V. MR. MODDRIDGE’S NERVES CUT LOOSE 59
VI. THE SIGN OF MISCHIEF 65
VII. WORKING OUT THE PUZZLE 74
VIII. THE DASHING STERN CHASE 86
IX. PLAYING A SAILOR’S TRICK 95
X. THE MONEY STORM BREAKS LOOSE 106
XI. TOM HALSTEAD’S QUICK WIT AT WORK 120
XII. GOING STRAIGHT TO HEADQUARTERS 129
XIII. STEALING A SWIFT MARCH 137
XIV. THE MELTING OF MILLIONS 151
XV. THE MASTHEAD GAME 161
XVI. “PUTTING UP” A MARINE JOB 170
XVII. HANK BUTTS DROPS SOMETHING 177
XVIII. THE JEST THAT BECAME GRIM EARNEST 186
XIX. THE MOTOR THAT WOULDN’T “MOTE” 194
XX. THE COUNCIL OF WAR 205
XXI. THE BATTLE OF THE DOLLARS 212
XXII. SPRINGING THE MONEY MINE 223
XXIII. “TWO MILLION DOLLARS A POINT” 232
XXIV. CONCLUSION 246
The Motor Boat Club Off Long Island
CHAPTER I
A BREATHLESS MOMENT IN THE FOG
CLA-A-ANG! Cla-a-ang!
The “Rocket,” a sixty-foot motor cruiser, her engine slowed down to ten
miles an hour, had just moved out of comparatively clear water into
a thickish bank of fog. The bell, probably on board a sailing craft,
had just been heard for the first time off the starboard bow of the
cruiser, and close at hand.
Joe Dawson, forward lookout on the “Rocket,” leaned ahead, framing his
mouth with his hands as he shouted:
“Ahoy, there! Keep to your own port, captain!”
Cla-a-ang! Cla-a-ang!
The sound of the bell was appallingly nearer, now, seemingly almost
upon the motor boat.
Captain Tom Halstead, at the “Rocket’s” wheel, abaft of midship,
sounded a shrill warning from his craft’s auto whistle.
Too-oot!
At the same time Halstead threw his own wheel over to go to port of the
bell-ringing stranger.
It was a fog that seemed to grow denser with every foot of headway. The
water at the hull alongside was barely visible.
Then through the mist ahead shot the tip of a bowsprit. Despite the
signals, or through misunderstanding them, the sailing vessel was
keeping to her course. She was due either to ram the “Rocket,” or to be
rammed by that agile little cruising craft.
There was but one thing to do—to reverse the engine with lightning
speed. The engine controls lay convenient to the young skipper’s
hand and feet as he stood by the wheel. He was just reaching for the
reversing lever, in fact, when, from well aft sounded another boy’s
warning:
“Racing craft about to ram your port quarter, captain!”
While, from one of the two men passengers rose an almost despairing
shriek:
“I can’t stand this sort of thing. I’d sooner jump overboard!”
Captain Tom, however, without betraying any excitement, sprang so
that he could easily glance astern. Instead of the reversing gear, he
grabbed for the speed ahead. One glance aft showed him a long, narrow
motor craft diving out of the fog. To reverse would mean a collision
with the motor boat; to go ahead would mean a smash against the sailing
craft. Whatever was to be done had to be thought out at electric speed,
all in a second.
Tom’s judgment was for speed ahead. In that sudden emergency he
increased the fog speed greatly, at the same time throwing his wheel
over as far as it would go.
Thus he escaped a violent meeting with the racing craft, but ranged up
alongside of the sailing vessel, a schooner that now appeared dimly, in
an almost ghostly light, her rail, soon parallel with the “Rocket’s,”
being only a few yards away.
“You lobster smack!” cried Joe, contemptuously. “Why do you ship
lubbers for officers?”
The stupid handling that the sailing craft had displayed was enough to
rouse anger in the mind of anyone endangered by the gross carelessness.
“Get out, you floating oil-stove!” came back, sullenly, from the
sailing craft’s quarter deck. “Your gasoline dories ought to be
confined to duck ponds.”
Joe grinned. His wrath was easily dissipated at any time. Anyway,
young Captain Halstead, swiftly wearing away to port and again slowing
down the speed, put an end to conversation with the stranger.
In this manœuvre the unknown racing motor craft had, of course, been
given ample room, and was doubtless well out of reach by this time. But
Jed Prentiss, his face still a trifle white, stood on the same spot on
the after deck from which he had sounded warning of the swift, narrow
boat’s coming.
“Now, Moddridge,” urged a heavy, easy, persuasive voice, “get a grip on
yourself and be a man. You see for yourself how easily our new skipper
carries himself and the boat in a tight squeeze.”
“But my dear Delavan,” protested the one addressed as Moddridge, “I
simply can’t stand this sort of thing. My nerves——”
“Your nerves have always been the master of a fool slave,” retorted Mr.
Delavan, good humoredly. “Come, be born again, and rule your nerves and
your wits.”
“That scooter acted like a regular pirate,” uttered Jed Prentiss, under
his breath. “Rushing over the old ocean, and never a sound from her
whistle or bell!”
Mr. Francis Delavan, owner of the “Rocket,” tall, broad-shouldered,
rosy-cheeked and athletic looking despite his fifty years, stepped
across the short after deck, going up the short flight of steps at
starboard and posting himself on the bridge deck beside Skipper Tom.
“What’s your speed now, captain?” inquired the owner.
“Slowed down to six, sir,” replied young Halstead, punctuating his
reply by sounding the auto whistle.
“That’s a wise speed, captain,” nodded the owner. “I haven’t been in as
thick a fog as this all season.”
“Are you going to stay here a little while, sir?” queried Tom.
“Why? Anything I can do for you?”
“You might sound the whistle, every thirty seconds, sir, if you will.
That will give me a much better chance to pay heed to the lookouts.”
“All right, captain,” laughed the owner, drawing out a handsome watch.
“If I make the intervals forty, instead of thirty seconds, put me in
irons as soon as you like.”
Captain Tom smiled, but made no other reply. All the young sailing
master’s attention was centered on the work in hand. There is nothing
at all like play about handling a sixty-foot craft in such a fog. As
the incident just closed had shown, there are other lives than those
of one’s own sailing party that are at stake in a possible collision in
the fog.
“Are you going to try to keep out in this fog, sir?” asked Halstead,
some two minutes later.
“Yes,” came the owner’s decisive answer. “Though Moddridge doesn’t
appear to think so, it is well worth while to risk big stakes on a
meeting with the big ‘Kaiser Wilhelm.’ It may be worth a small fortune
to me.”
“There are times when money doesn’t mean much to me,” put in Eben
Moddridge, who had followed his friend up to the bridge deck, which, on
the “Rocket,” instead of being forward, was somewhat abaft of amidships.
Moddridge was a pale, thin, hollow-cheeked, nervous looking man of
forty, and of a height of five feet four. Not much to look at was Mr.
Moddridge, yet, in his own way, he was a good deal of a power in Wall
Street.
“Moddridge,” retorted the owner, firmly, “this is a time when you can
do only one useful thing. Go below and turn in. I’ll wake you when the
fog has lifted.”
“What? I lie down?” demanded Eben Moddridge, in a startled voice. “And
then very likely go down to the fishes without ever waking up?”
“We haven’t that kind of a captain, now,” replied Mr. Delavan, easily.
“You just saw how easily he pulled the ‘Rocket’ out of a dangerous
trap. If Captain Bill Hartley had stood in Halstead’s place we’d have
been smashed fore and aft.”
“Hartley was an excellent skipper,” retorted Moddridge, peevishly.
“He was a most careful man. He never would have gone into a fog. He
wouldn’t take a chance of being wrecked.”
“That was why I had to get rid of him, Eben,” retorted Mr. Delavan.
“Hartley was an old maid, who never ought to have tried to follow the
sea. If it looked like rain he’d run for harbor and drop anchor.”
“A very wise and careful sailing master,” insisted Mr. Moddridge.
“Yes; Hartley had nerves to pretty near match your own,” mocked Mr.
Delavan. “But he wasn’t the kind of man for the kind of work we have
in hand nowadays. And now, Moddridge, I know that your talk, and mine,
is bothering Captain Halstead. Go down aft again, and don’t bother the
lookout by talking to him. Be a good fellow.”
Muttering, and with many shakings of the head, the smaller man obeyed.
He would try to be brave, but nothing could conceal from Eben Moddridge
the certainty that they were shortly to be sunk.
“The ‘Kaiser’ could slip in by us easily, in this mean fog,” declared
Mr. Delavan.
“Not if she keeps to her usual course on this part of the trip,”
Halstead answered. “She’d be in these waters in passing, and we haven’t
heard any fog-whistle heavy enough to come from a craft of that size.”
All these minutes the owner, who possessed the faculty of keeping his
mind on two things at once, had not forgotten to sound the auto whistle
at regular intervals.
“I think, sir,” Tom spoke presently, “I had better keep to mere headway
now.”
“Do so, if that’s your best judgment,” nodded Francis Delavan. “But
remember, captain, that to-day’s game is one that has to be played in
earnest.”
“We won’t miss the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm,’ if she comes in soon, and follows
her usual course,” Halstead answered.
Though Tom still kept one hand on the wheel, the “Rocket” seemed almost
to rest motionless on the gentle swell.
It was an August day. The motor craft, a handsome sixty-foot affair of
racing build and with powerful engines, lay on the light, fog-covered
swell some twelve miles nearly due south of Shinnecock Bay on the
southern coast of Long Island.
Readers of former narratives in this series will remember how Mr.
Prescott, a Boston broker, organized the Motor Boat Club among the
sea-trained boys at the mouth of the Kennebec River, in Maine.
Tom Halstead was fleet captain of the Club, and Joe Dawson the fleet
engineer. They were the two most skilled members.
Readers will also remember how these two sixteen-year-old handlers of
motor boats were sent by Mr. Prescott to enter the sea-going service of
Horace Dunstan, a wealthy resident of the island of Nantucket, south of
Cape Cod. It will be remembered how Tom Halstead and Joe Dawson, with
Jed Prentiss, a Nantucket boy, as comrade, went through a series of
dangerous yet exhilarating adventures which resulted in the detection
and capture by the United States authorities of a crew of filibusters
who were attempting to smuggle out of the country arms and ammunition
intended for revolutionists in the republic of Honduras. It was while
at Nantucket that these three members of the Motor Boat Club had also,
after going through a maze of search and adventure, discovered the
missing Dunstan heir and insured to the latter a great inheritance that
Master Ted Dunstan had been upon the point of losing.
And now we find the same three young Americans aboard the “Rocket,”
a somewhat larger craft than either of the others that Captain Tom
Halstead had handled. It will not take long to account for the presence
of the trio aboard this craft in Long Island waters.
The “Meteor,” Horace Dunstan’s boat at Nantucket, was now in charge of
two Nantucket boys for whom Jed had secured membership in the Motor
Boat Club. This was the first day for Tom, Joe and Jed aboard the
“Rocket.”
Francis Delavan, the owner, was one of the men who make the History of
Money in Wall Street. Besides being a daring operator there Delavan
was also the president of and a big stockholder in the Portchester and
Youngstown Railroad, more commonly known as the P. & Y. Now, the P. &
Y., while one of the smaller railroads of the country, was, on account
of its connections, a property of considerable value.
Mr. Delavan was not one of the multi-millionaires who keep palatial
summer homes on the south side of Long Island. Just at present he
contented himself with a suite of rooms at the Eagle House in East
Hampton, spending some days of every week in New York City.
The “Rocket’s” former captain, Hartley, was entirely too timorous
and cautious a master to suit an owner who loved a spice of danger
and adventure on the salt water. So Mr. Delavan had felt obliged to
let Captain Hartley go. Griggs, the former engineer, had not been
over-brave, either. Griggs had had trouble with a rough character on
shore, and, upon being threatened by him with serious bodily harm, had
promptly deserted his post on the “Rocket,” going to parts unknown.
Thus, at the time when the “Rocket” was laid up, and yet most urgently
needed by her owner, Mr. Delavan had met his friend Mr. Prescott in
New York. What followed was that Tom, Joe and Jed had been wired to
leave Nantucket, if convenient for Mr. Dunstan, and proceed at once to
Shinnecock Bay. As two young friends of Jed’s had been trained well
enough to be able to handle the “Meteor” satisfactorily, Tom, Joe and
Jed had traveled to Long Island with all speed. This was their first
forenoon aboard the “Rocket,” and it was destined to prove a lively one.
All three were in their natty, sea-going, brass-buttoned blue uniforms
of the Motor Boat Club. Each wore an officer’s visored cap. Jed, when
serving as steward, changed his blue to white duck, but he also served
frequently in engine room or on deck.
Just now, as fore and aft lookouts were needed, and as the big motor
was running smoothly, control of the engine was managed through the
deck-gear near the steering wheel.
For another half-hour the “Rocket” barely moved over the water, though
now her nose was pointed east, in the track of in-coming steamships.
Mr. Moddridge had quieted down enough to stretch himself in one of the
wicker chairs on the low after deck, where he chewed nervously at the
end of a mild cigar that was seldom lighted. In this time no other
craft came near them, or, if it did, failed to sound fog signals.
And now the fog was lifting slowly. The lookouts were able to see over
the waters for a distance of some two hundred feet at least.
“A morning fog, in August, off the Long Island coast, isn’t likely to
last long,” said Mr. Delavan. “In half an hour more you may be able to
see the horizon on every side.”
“I hope so,” nodded Captain Tom. “Fog has few delights for the sailor.
Without fog we could make out a huge craft like the ‘Kaiser’ at a great
distance. Listen, sir! Did you hear that?”
Again the sound came, though faintly, from far away.
Whoo-oo-oo! whoo-oo-oo! It was a hoarse, deep-throated, powerful blast
on a fog-whistle.
“That comes from some big craft, sir; as like as not the ‘Kaiser
Wilhelm der Grosse.’”
“Have you ever seen that steamship?”
“No, sir; but I’ve studied her pictures. I think I’d know her if I saw
her.”
“I’m hoping and praying that you do see her this day,” rejoined Mr.
Delavan. “I’ve a pretty big barrel of money at stake on seeing that
steamship. Well, she isn’t in sight now, so I’m going below to get some
cigars.”
His easy manner was in sharp contrast to the fidgeting nervousness of
Eben Moddridge. As soon as the owner had vanished into the cabin the
nervous one almost trotted up onto the bridge deck.
“You haven’t any means of knowing, for a certainty, that that is the
‘Kaiser Wilhelm’?” asked Mr. Moddridge, sharply.
“No, sir; I can only hope that it is,” Captain Tom responded.
“I hope it’s the ‘Kaiser’; I hope it is, I hope it is,” cried Mr.
Moddridge. As further evidence of the excited state of his mind that
gentleman commenced to pace the bridge deck, from side to side, with
quick, agitated steps.
“Wonder why on earth both are so eager for a glimpse of one of the
biggest passenger ships afloat?” wondered Halstead, attending, now, to
the whistle at two-minute intervals, as well as steering. “But, pshaw!
It’s none of my business why the owner and his friend want or don’t
want things. That’s their own affair. Stick to your wheel and your
other duties, Tom, old fellow!”
Yet, though Halstead honestly tried to drive the matter out of his
mind, it was human nature that he should still wonder and catch himself
making all sorts of guesses. The words “a fortune” exert a strong magic
over most human minds. Tom had heard the owner declare that a fortune
hung in the balance on this day’s work.
“Well, if there is any fortune at stake on my giving these gentlemen
a glimpse of the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm,’” Halstead told himself, “it’s my
sole business to see that I give them the look-across at the big ship.
That’s all I need to know.”
Whatever large steam craft it was that was sounding the fog-horn
slightly south of a due east line from the “Rocket,” she was coming
nearer with every minute. The increase in the volume of sound told that
much.
“How are we making the stranger, Halstead?” inquired Mr. Delavan,
returning to the bridge deck, a lighted cigar between his teeth. He
dropped into a comfortable arm-chair.
“She’s coming nearer, sir, and we can see for three or four hundred
feet, now, in every direction. There’s but a slight chance of the
vessel getting by us.”
“What ails you, Moddridge?” demanded Mr. Delavan, turning and gazing
wonderingly at his friend.
“I’m nervous, of course,” returned that gentleman.
“Pshaw! Sit down and let your nerves rest.”
“But I can’t!”
“Stand up, then,” pursued Mr. Delavan, coolly. “But you’re tiring
yourself out, Moddridge, with that jerky gait over such a short course.”
“Delavan, have you no mind, no nerves?” cried Moddridge, raspingly.
“When you stop to think of the great amounts of money that are at
stake. When you——”
Eben Moddridge paused, out of breath.
“Well?” insisted Mr. Delavan, placidly.
“Oh, pshaw!” snapped the nervous one. “There’s no use in talking to
you, or trying to make you understand. You’ve no imagination.”
“For which I’m very thankful,” responded the owner, blowing out a cloud
of smoke.
The fog was lifting more and more, the sun’s rays trying to pierce what
was left of the haze.
“You may as well come in, lookouts,” hailed Captain Tom.
“Jed, if you’re through with deck duty,” called Mr. Delavan, “suppose
you begin to think of getting lunch.”
“All right, sir,” Prentiss answered, and disappeared.
“Oh, Delavan, man,” groaned Mr. Moddridge, “how on earth can you talk
about eating when everything lies at stake as it does?”
“Why, after I get the word,” rejoined the owner, “I shall be hungry
enough to eat—anything.”
“But what if the news be of the worst kind?”
“Let us hope it won’t be, Moddridge.”
“Yet, if it is? You don’t mean to say, Delavan, that you could think of
eating _then_?”
“Confound you, man,” drawled Mr. Delavan. “What do you think my stomach
knows about news?”
The sounding of the fog-horn had died out some minutes ago, as the
vanishing fog rolled further and further away. And now, Tom, gazing
keenly ahead, saw a big black hull rapidly emerge out of a bank of fog
more than a mile away. He looked sharply for a few seconds. Then—
“Gentlemen,” announced the young skipper, pointing, “that craft over to
the eastward is, I think, the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.’”