“Jove!” burst from Jack’s lips, “what on earth is this fresh
complication?”
He had hardly spoken before there came a crash of glass close to his
hand, and something flew whistling by him. At the same instant the
searchlight was extinguished, and from seaward, where they had last seen
the speeding craft, came a dull “B-o-o-m!”
“Knocked that searchlight into smithereens,” was Tom’s exclamation as
old Jupe, with an alarmed cry, came running forward at the sound of the
screaming projectile and the splintering glass.
“At any rate,” was Jack’s grim retort, “they’ve shown us their hands.
Tom, old chap, this thing is going to be bigger than we thought.”
“You think then——”
“That we are not the only persons interested in the _Sea King_. If I
don’t make a big mistake, that shot was a message from our friend X. Y.
Z.”
“It looks like it,” admitted Tom; “oh, if we could only glimpse the _Sea
King_!”
“The rocket cattle from her. I’m sure of it. She must have mistaken the
lights of that marine raceabout for our signals.”
“Let’s try an answering rocket,” suggested Tom.
“Won’t do any harm. Jupe, quit shivering like a jellyfish and get the
rockets out. Two will be enough. Tom, you rig the tube.”
The firing apparatus, a cylinder of galvanized iron, was speedily rigged
in place, and by that time Jupe, whose face was an ashen gray tinge,
reappeared with the rockets, two powerful signaling instruments, two
feet or more in length.
“All right, Tom, touch them off,” came from Jack, as the younger lad
proclaimed that all was ready.
There was the sputter of a match, a burst of yellow flame and then,
almost instantly, a roar and a shriek as the first of the signals shot
aloft, trailing a long tail of golden fire. At two hundred feet it
exploded in a shower of blue stars. Almost simultaneously, it seemed,
another cluster of red stars were spattered over the sky.
“Hurray! That’s the _Sea King_, sure enough!” cried Jack; “see, they’ve
answered us. Crowd her as much as you can, Tom, it’s a race for all
we’re worth now.”
“I can get a bit more speed, but it means overheating the engines,”
warned Tom.
“Never mind that. Put us alongside the _Sea King_ ahead of that other
chap, and I don’t care if you blow the engines up,” was the curt
rejoinder.
Tom shrugged his shoulders as he went below, but a few seconds later the
dial hand of the patent log crept up a notch.
“Fourteen knots!” exclaimed Jack, with a note of satisfaction, “we’ll
beat her out yet.”
All at once, from out of the obscurity, a grim possibility materialized.
Rushing straight for the _Vagrant_ came a sharp bow, with a wave of
white phosphorescent foam curling away from it on each side as it
cleaved the swells.
“Great guns! They’re trying to ram us!” gasped out Jack as he sensed the
meaning of this new peril.
He seized up the speaking tube and bellowed down to Tom with all the
force of his lungs.
“Back! Back her for our lives!”
Round spun the spokes of the wheel fast as a revolving squirrel’s cage.
The _Vagrant’s_ forward way was checked, but not wholly. To Jack’s
horror it seemed impossible that the other vessel could fail in her
evident object of ramming the smaller craft.
Less than a few score of feet separated them now. He could hear the hiss
of the other craft’s cutwater as it rushed down on them.
“Golly to goodness, Marse Jack, dey sink us fo’ sho’,” wailed Jupe,
dropping to his knees in terror on the bridge.
Jack vouchsafed no reply. But the next instant he felt like giving a
shout of joy. The backward revolving propeller of the _Vagrant_ was
“biting” the water. The motor craft’s forward impulse was checked. She
hesitated, stopped, and slowly her bow began to swing. It was not a
second too soon. As the _Vagrant_ swung off, the other craft tore by at
a vicious speed, and Jack saw that her bow was shaped like a
man-of-war’s “ram.” So closely did she race across the _Vagrant’s_ bow
that he could see dim figures on her bridge, and could catch a torrent
of maledictions, as those in command of the strange vessel saw that
their evident purpose had been frustrated.
At the pace she was going. Jack realized that it would be some moments
before she could be put on another tack for a fresh onslaught.
“Ahead! Come ahead!” he shouted down the tube, and the propeller of the
_Vagrant_ began to churn in a forward direction once more. The lads’
craft forged forward, crossing the troubled wake of the vindictive
stranger.
“Glory be!” breathed old Jupe fervently; “ah could heah de angels’ harps
dat time, Marse Jack.”
“I don’t know that I wasn’t in the same mental condition myself,”
rejoined Jack, with a nervous laugh. His hands shook and his heart beat
thickly. The escape had been narrow enough to unnerve older and more
experienced persons than this boyish captain.
“Ahoy!” came a sudden voice out of the darkness ahead, “what craft’s
that?”
“The _Vagrant_!” hailed back Jack, with a glad ring in his tones; “is
that the _Sky King_?”
“Aye! aye! Thank heaven, you’ve come—in time,” was the answering hail
from the yacht.
A moment later, against the stars. Jack could trace the spidery outlines
of the larger vessel’s spars and wireless aerials and rigging.
“This is Jack Chadwick,” he shouted, not giving a thought to the
stranger craft now, but in a torment of anxiety to know what it all
portended, “is my father on board?”
There was a pause. Across the water there came a confused murmur of
voices, but what they said was not audible.
“_Sea King_, ahoy!” hailed Jack impatiently, “is my father on board and
well?”
“Your father is well, we hope, but he’s not on board,” came back the
reply in somewhat hesitating tones.
“Not on board!” stammered Jack, feeling for an instant as if he had been
struck a heavy blow, “then where is he?”
“Come alongside. Master Jack,” was the response, “there’s a lot to be
told.”
The black hulk of the _Sea King_ was plainly visible now, and Jack,
steering carefully, with one hand on the engine-room signaling device,
skillfully maneuvered the _Vagrant_ alongside of the bigger craft. As he
did so an accommodation ladder was lowered, and several heads appeared
along the yacht’s rail.
“Stop her,” chimed the signal.
Then came the order to reverse and then “stop” once more. Jupe, with a
line in his hand, leaped for the accommodation ladder. Tom, emerging on
deck, took in the situation in a glance and made for the stern. He
hurled another line, which was caught from above. In as short a time as
it takes to tell it, the _Vagrant_ was snugly moored alongside her
larger consort.
Jack, with his head in a whirl, stepped from the bridge. Tom was at his
side in an instant.
“Is all well with Uncle Chester?” he demanded impatiently. “Is he on
board?”
“No, he isn’t,” came the staggering reply, in a voice that was half a
sob. It was a bolt from the blue that had assailed the lad, and who will
blame him for being utterly unnerved by the blow fate had just dealt
him.
Tom was silent for an instant. Tidings that stun have a way of sinking
in slowly. Then, as the two lads stood at the foot of the ladder, he
flung his arm around Jack’s shoulder, and from his gritted teeth came
speech:
“If harm has come to him. Jack, those who have caused it will have to
pay—_and pay big!_”
And so the two lads ascended the ladder to the _Sea King’s_ deck,
followed by the awe-struck Jupe.