A STERN CHASE.
In the meantime, from station to station, within a radius in which it
was reasonable to suppose the fugitive would land, the wireless was
sending out its waves of alarm. The various stations attached to
life-saving headquarters along the coast took the message and, in turn,
telephoned the local authorities of near-by towns. Ding-dong received
these assurances through the ether and transmitted them to his friends.
Excitement was rife. It looked as if by means of the wireless they had
spread a net that left not a mesh for the fugitive to slip through.
Nor was this all on which they based their hopes of overhauling him. It
was a long, weary row to the shore, and, as Nat had pointed out, Minory,
deeming himself secure from pursuit, would probably be in no particular
hurry, but conserve his strength. From the bridge of the _Nomad_ such an
object as a rowboat would be conspicuous for a long distance. If only
Captain Thompson hastened his return with the wandering motor craft,
they stood about an even chance of capturing Minory themselves. It was a
situation that thrilled them, and the time dragged wearily till smoke on
the horizon announced the approach of the _Hattie and Jane_.
She anchored off the island and flashed ashore a message of greeting.
Attached to her stern by a stout hawser was the errant _Nomad_. At sight
of the returned wanderer the boys set up a ringing cheer. Captain
Thompson, a weather-beaten old salt, rowed ashore in the dory that the
_Hattie and Jane_ lowered, and received his reward. He pocketed it with
a grin, as much as to say, “A pretty good morning’s work”; but the boys
did not grudge it to him. The return of the _Nomad_ meant much more to
them than that.
The dory was loaded up with gasolene, and after two trips between the
shore and the _Nomad_, the latter was ready, with full fuel tanks, “to
receive passengers.” Professor Jenkins, still so weak that he had to be
supported to the boat, was the first to be taken off. Then the boys
closed up the shanty and the wireless station and within half an hour
were under way, with the _Hattie and Jane_ flying a bunting salute in
response to the boys’ string of flags which spelled out to the fishing
steamer “Good luck.”
“Now, Joe, keep your eyes peeled,” ordered Nat. “I’d give a whole lot to
run that fellow down and land him ourselves. If once he gets ashore,
he’s slippery enough to get clear away.”
Dr. Chalmers, who had gone below with his patient, and also to make an
examination of the professor’s trunks, came on the bridge at this moment
with a dismal report.
As they had apprehended, Minory, before cutting the _Nomad_ loose, had
ransacked the trunks. The model was gone, and the doctor feared that to
inform the professor of the loss might cause a serious relapse in his
condition.
It was agreed, therefore, to reply only vaguely to any questions he
might ask. But fortunately the inventor, completely worn out by
excitement and weakness, sank into a deep sleep almost as soon as he was
laid on the divan below, and they were spared the necessity of evasive
replies to the questions he would have been sure to ask about the safety
of the model.
It must be confessed that when Nat learned the clever and thorough way
in which Minory had carried out the last part of his desperate plan for
stealing the fruits of the professor’s inventive faculty, his heart
rather sank. Somehow, he did not feel quite so sanguine as he had at
first that they would succeed, either themselves or through their
wide-flung messages, in capturing the fellow. The remarkable ingenuity
he had shown in his attempts on the wireless torpedo in New York, in his
successful espionage of the inventor across the continent, and in his
last coup of getting himself on board the craft on which the man he had
injured was being conveyed ashore all showed an acute intellect, a
depraved sort of genius for carrying out whatever nefarious ends its
possessor had in view. Nat didn’t underrate his antagonist. He knew by
this time that they had a wily and perhaps a desperate foe to fight.
The sea was as smooth as glass, and, although the sun beat hotly down,
there was yet a refreshing breeze. These factors would aid Minory in his
long row, supplementing the work of his muscles, which, despite his
scrawny form, Nat judged to be wiry and powerful.
The _Nomad_ was crowded along to every ounce of her speed capacity.
Ding-dong never left his engines a second, but watched them with anxious
solicitude. He was fully aware of how much depended now upon the
performance of the motor. So far it was running sweet and true, with a
humming song that delighted the watchful boy engineer. Oil can in hand,
he doused the bearings and moving parts with lubricant from time to
time, feeling a shaft collar or an eccentric band to detect symptoms of
overheating.
The distant coast range, faintly blue and luminous, loomed up through
the heat haze before long, but although Nat stationed Joe with the
binoculars to keep active and constant watch for the skiff, nothing
appeared in the field of the powerful glasses to warrant Joe in giving
the alarm.
Once he saw something black and was on the point of crying out. The next
minute he was glad that he hadn’t. The object proved to be only a
floating log with a solemn line of seagulls bobbing up and down on it as
it rose and fell on the swells.
“Begins to look bad, Nat,” commented Joe, as the outlines of the rugged,
bare coast range became clearer and still no sign of a boat swam within
the horizon of the glasses.
“I must admit that it does,” rejoined Nat, “but it’s up to us to keep
hoping against hope.”
Suddenly a thought came to Joe.
“See here, Nat, unless that fellow is as skillful a boat handler as he
is a crook he couldn’t land on the bare coast. The surf would be rolling
too high even on a calm day like this to permit him to do so even if he
tried to.”
“That’s so, Joe; you do have a bright thought once in a while.”
“Thank you,” grinned Joe; “and now let me go on to say that in my
opinion he’ll make for some cove.”
“Of which there are none too many hereabouts,” responded Nat. “Let’s
see, which one is the nearest?”
“Why, Whale Inlet, in the salt meadows beyond Point Conception.”
“That’s right, but he’d hardly know of that unless he is more familiar
with this coast than it is reasonable to suppose.”
“But having observed what the conditions were along the beach and
realizing that he couldn’t negotiate the surf, he’d be likely to go
hunting for such an inlet, wouldn’t he?”
“Sounds reasonable. But the point is just this, why wouldn’t he go
toward Santa Barbara itself?”
“Why, because, if he’s as shrewd as I think he is, he will have guessed
that we have sent out a wireless alarm for him by this time.”
“But how does he know we have such an apparatus?”
“Just this. If for no other reason, he knows we picked up that wireless
from the _Iroquois_, that message that got us into all this pickle.”
Before Nat could reply, the sailor whom they had rescued with his
employers the night before, and who had been standing with Mr. Anderson
on the bridge, gave an exclamation.
“I don’t want to give a false alarm, gentlemen, but what’s that object
off there?”
“Where?” demanded Nat. “Give me the glasses, Joe, quick.”
Something in the sailor’s voice had made him alert and active in an
instant.
He applied the glasses to his eyes and gazed through them for a few
seconds.
“It’s a boat, a rowboat,” he announced after his brief scrutiny.
“Our boat?” asked Joe almost tremulously.
“I think so,” was the reply, as the _Nomad’s_ course was altered and she
was headed directly for the distant speck that the sailor’s sharp eyes
had espied.