THE CHASE
They had just circled the last pleasure yacht anchored before the island
and were squared away for a trip down the bay, when their attention was
attracted by a small motor boat apparently stranded in mid-channel.
“The ferry will run them down if they don’t watch out,” said Ruth,
reaching for their ancient brass field glass.
“It—well, now what?” She dropped the glass to stare at the boat with the
naked eye. “It’s your little friend the Secret Service man from Witches
Cove,” she told Pearl. “There are three men with him and they seem no end
excited. One is trying frantically to get the engine going. The other
three are waving wildly at us. Head her in that way. Give her all the
sail.”
Pearl swung about. In an incredibly short time they were within hailing
distance.
“That boat can sail some, can’t she?” the little man shouted.
“She can,” said Ruth through cupped hands.
“Come alongside and take us on board. They’re getting away.” The Secret
Service man swung his arm down the bay, where through the light fog a
second motor boat was just passing behind the island.
“Who’s getting away?” Ruth asked in some astonishment as they came close
up.
“The bombers—the smugglers—the—the wild rascals, whoever they may be, you
know as well as I.” The man was in a great state of perspiration. “They
just left old Fort Skammel.”
The three girls stared as if they had seen a ghost.
“They can’t have,” said Ruth as soon as she found her voice. “They’re
dead, blown into a thousand pieces by their own dynamite.”
“Strange,” puffed the little man as he scrambled aboard the _Flyaway_,
followed by his three companions.
“Let her drift,” he said as he saw Ruth eyeing the stalled motor boat.
“Someone will pick her up. There’s important matters afoot. What’s one
motor boat more or less?”
“Dead! Blown to pieces!” he exclaimed as soon as he had taken three deep
breaths. “Show us you are sailors, and we’ll prove to you that they are
neither dead nor blown to pieces. I saw that wild looking fellow with the
tangled black hair and shining eyes, saw him plainly.”
“The man of the face-in-the-fire,” Ruth said to Pearl, as she set the
_Flyaway_ to skimming up the bay. “The very one. Must be. What do you
know about that!”
Not one of the three knew what about it, so they were silent until they
too had rounded the island and saw the fleeing boat, a low, dark affair
of moderate speed, popping along dead ahead.
“Well, will we overhaul them?” the little man asked anxiously.
“Will if the wind holds. May drop any time,” said Ruth. “Little fog. May
burn off. May thicken. Can’t tell.” With a boy’s cap jammed tight over
her head, she stood there swaying with the boat and giving her every inch
of sail she’d carry.
“It’s to be a race,” she told herself, “a race between the _Flyaway_ and
that motor boat.” There was something altogether unusual about the whole
affair. If these were the men, if indeed they had escaped the storm and
the explosion, as indeed they appeared to have done, then the _Flyaway_,
which they had attempted to destroy along with the three of them, was
hunting down the very ones who had meant to destroy her.
“Good old _Flyaway_!” she whispered. “Do your best!”
“We’ll catch them,” she told herself a short time later. “And then?” She
dared not think what might follow. These were desperate men. If caught,
they would serve long terms in prison. They would not surrender without a
battle.
It was strange the thoughts that passed through her mind as they sped
along. Now she was thinking of that secret room in old Fort Skammel. How
was it heated? Were the silks still there? If the men were captured, what
then? The silks would be confiscated by the customs office.
“There’s some sort of law that gives the finder a share,” she told
herself. “We found them right enough.” She thrilled at the thought of
owning a room half filled with silk dresses and bolts of silk cloth.
A moment later she was talking with the little Secret Service man,
joining him in an effort to unravel the tangled web of mysteries that had
been woven about them.
She spoke first of the ancient wood carrying schooner, of its dark
foreign skipper and the bales of cloth in the hold. The little man seemed
astonished.
“There,” he said, “I think you are entirely wrong. Did you ever happen to
look at that skipper’s hands?”
Ruth had not.
“They’re hard as pine knots and the muscles of his arms are like wooden
beams. You don’t get a man like that for smuggling or stealing. They love
physical labor too much and the contentment that comes with it.”
He agreed with her when she said that the smugglers had a hand in the
destruction of _Black Gull_. That the cache in the old fort was theirs,
neither of them doubted.
When Ruth spoke of the dark seaplane Pearl had seen off Monhegan on that
stormy night, he seemed greatly surprised and excited.
“Are we doing the best we can?” he asked suddenly, wrinkling his brow and
looking up at the sail.
“Our level best,” said Ruth. “And if the wind holds it is good enough.
See, we have gained half the distance already.”
It was true. They had now come so close to the fleeing craft that they
were able to make out moving figures on her.
Lifting the glass, Ruth studied the sea and the power boat for a moment.
Then, quite suddenly she dropped the glass. She had looked straight into
that dark visage, the face-in-the-fire.
“How can one explain it?” she said, as a shudder ran through her stout
frame.
“Explain what?” the little man asked.
Ruth told him of their harrowing experience of the previous day and of
the tremendous explosion at sea.
“There is no explanation at present,” he said quietly. “There may never
be any. We who spend our lives delving into hidden mysteries know that
half of them are never solved.”
In spite of the realization that they were off on a perilous mission,
Ruth felt a comforting warmth take possession of her. Only yesterday,
with every hope apparently gone, she had been drifting on a sailless,
mastless boat out to sea in the face of a storm. Now, with that same
boat, she was treading on the heels of those who had willed her death.
The end of all the summer’s excitement and mystery was near.
But what was this? A thin film of smoke rose from the power boat ahead.
Ten seconds had not passed before this had become a veritable pillar of
black towering toward the sky. “Their boat is on fire!” she cried.
“Smoke screen,” said the little man, still calm. “There! There! See? They
are taking to their dory! We’ll get them now.”
“But what is that a little way over there to the right, close to that
little rocky island?”
All eyes followed the direction she had indicated. Then as one, they
exclaimed:
“A seaplane! A seaplane! The dark, trans-Atlantic plane! We have lost
them!”
That the men should escape now seemed inevitable. The seaplane was moving
rapidly across the water. Soon she would be upon the dory from the
smoking schooner. A hasty scramble aboard her, and they would rise to
speed away at such a pace as no sailboat ever knew.
Ruth was ready to sit down and cry. She had risked so much. She had
experienced such terrible things. She had hoped and hoped again. Truly
she had come to know what life was. And now—
But again a surprise leaped at them from the air. The thunder of an
airplane motor, not that of the dark seaplane, but another, struck their
ears. As it doubled and redoubled in volume Ruth thought of the young air
scout who had assisted her in saving Betty’s life off Green Island, and a
great surge of hope welled up within her.