The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless: or, the Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise
TextCHAPTER XI
THE DRAB BOAT SHOWS HER NOSE
“You keep off!” snarled Jasper, drawing back on the defensive, holding the wire-nippers so as to use them in defending himself.
But, if the young captain of the “Restless” knew any fear, at such moments, he didn’t permit others to see it. He neither stopped nor swerved. Ducking in under Jasper’s extended right arm, Tom closed with the fellow, grappling.
“Confound ye! I’ll have to throw ye over into the water!” growled Jasper, fighting for a hold around the boy’s waist and behind his back. But Halstead fought to break the grip, at the same time yelling:
“Hank! Here, mighty quick!”
Jasper fought, trying to force the young commander to the rail. He had half succeeded when Hank Butts raced on deck. Hepton, the other guard, who had been lounging in the engine room, was right behind Butts. Both of them raced to reach the struggling pair. Hank caught Jasper at the waist-line, while Hepton took a hold at Jasper’s neck, forcing the fellow back.
Then Tom sailed into the melee with renewed energy. Jasper was a powerfully-built fellow, but the three were too many for him. They tripped Jasper, throwing him to the deck, and Hepton sat upon his comrade’s chest.
“Halstead! You others! What does this violence mean?”
Powell Seaton shouted the question sternly. He had been disturbed by the racket and now stood amidships.
“Get him over, face down,” panted Tom. “We’ll make sure of the fellow before we begin to explain. Hank, run for a pair of handcuffs!”
Butts was up and off like a shot, wholly liking the nature of his errand.
“Halstead!” raged Mr. Seaton. “I insist upon an answer.”
“It’s a case of sea-bullying – that’s what it is,” growled Jasper. “It’s an outrage.”
“Hepton,” warned the charter-man, “get up off of Jasper’s chest. Let him go.”
“Don’t you do it,” countermanded Tom Halstead. “It won’t be safe. This fellow is a snake in the grass. I caught him at his tricks.”
Hepton had acted undecidedly for a moment. Now, he concluded to stand by the young captain.
In a trice Hank was back. Now the three assailed Jasper, rolling him over on his face. Tom Halstead, himself, fitted the handcuffs.
“Take the wheel, Hank, until I’m through with this,” panted Tom, leaping up from the treacherous guard. The locked wheel was now steering the “Restless” over an erratic course, but Hank swiftly had the boat on her true course once more.
“I insist on knowing what this shameful business means,” cried Mr. Seaton, glaring at his young skipper.
“I should think you might. It’s an outrage!” shouted Jasper.
“This fellow,” charged young Captain Halstead, “was in the very act of cutting the aerial wires with a wire-nipper when I caught him. Why, I can show you the nippers he had.”
Tom wheeled, to make a quick search along the deck. Jasper grinned covertly for he had thrown the nippers overboard in the struggle.
“You see!” flared the prisoner. “He talks about nippers – but where are they?”
“Halstead,” demanded Mr. Seaton, “do you intend to obey me by setting this man free until I’ve had an opportunity to investigate all sides of this remarkable charge?”
“No, sir, I do not,” rejoined Halstead, quietly though firmly.
“Do you forget that I command here?” raged the charter-man.
“Pardon me, but you don’t command,” retorted Skipper Tom, respectfully. “It is true that you have this boat under charter, but I am the captain and one of the owners, and I must handle trouble aboard in the manner that seems best. I caught this man in a treacherous attempt to make our errand this afternoon quite useless. Jasper stays in irons until we reach port. I’m sorry to be so stubborn with you, Mr. Seaton, but, just now, you’ve a queer idea that I’m working against you. I must save you, sir, even from your own blindness. Hepton, will you help me take this fellow aft?”
“Surely,” nodded the guard, who, while he had not seen the start of the trouble, much preferred believing Halstead to Jasper.
Seeing that resistance might bring him nothing but a beating, Jasper sulkily allowed himself to be led along the deck. Down into the cabin he was taken, there to be thrust into the starboard stateroom. Joe, from his wireless table at the forward end of the cabin, looked up with much curiosity.
“He was trying to snip the wires in your aerial,” Halstead explained, after turning the key in the stateroom door.
“Glad you got him, then,” nodded Dawson.
Mr. Seaton had followed as far as the doorway. There he halted, well convinced that he could not, at present, persuade the young skipper to change his mind.
“Now, if you’ll be good enough to come up to the bridge deck, Mr. Seaton, I want to explain matters to you, sir,” proposed the captain of the “Restless.”
Rather stiffly the charter-man followed. Hepton, as though to show further good faith, took pains to remain aft.
“Do you remember the other night, when we were coming back with the guard for Lonely Island,” began Tom, in a low voice, “that we found one of the new guards leaning well over the deck-house behind our backs?”
“I do,” nodded Powell Seaton, coldly.
“That man, sir, was Jasper. To-day, when we are out trying to trace Anson Dalton over the open sea, I find that same fellow, Jasper, trying to cut the parallel wires of the aerial. Why should he do that unless he means to try to prevent our catching up with Dalton? Now, sir, putting two and two together, doesn’t it seem mighty reasonable to suspect that Jasper overheard what we were saying the other night, and then watched his chance to steal the papers that you and I thought were so safely hidden in the cupboard at the bungalow? I know, Mr. Seaton, you feel that you have some reason for suspecting us boys. In view of what happened the other night, and again this afternoon, isn’t it a whole lot more sensible to trace your misfortunes to Jasper?”
Powell Seaton, whose daze had continued ever since starting on this cruise, now pondered deeply, with knitted brows. At last, however, he looked up quickly, holding out his right hand, as he exclaimed:
“Halstead, I begin to believe that I have been too hasty and suspicious. I have hated myself for distrusting any of you boys, and yet–”
“And yet,” smiled Tom, “you are beginning to feel that there is not as much reason for suspecting us as there is for believing that the guilt of a mean theft lies at someone else’s door.”
“I beg you to forgive me, Halstead, you and your mates. But I hardly know what I am thinking or saying. My mind is in too deep a turmoil.”
“We’ll forget it, Mr. Seaton,” continued Halstead, as he pressed the other’s hand. “I can, easily, and I hope you’ll do your best to believe that you can trust us as fully as others have done.”
“You may just as well come forward, Hepton,” hailed Captain Tom, a few moments later. “And I want to thank you for the way you stood by me when I needed help so badly.”
“Ever since we’ve been at the island I’ve felt that I didn’t believe any too much in that man Jasper,” muttered Hepton. “He has been acting queer some of the time.”
“How?” asked Mr. Seaton.
“Well, for one thing, he always wanted the night guard duty. And he growled at taking the porch or the dock. What he wanted to do was to roam off about the island by himself. Whenever he came back he wanted to sit in your sitting-room, at the bungalow, and the fellow scowled if some of the rest of us showed any liking for staying in that sitting-room.”
“What do you make of that, sir?” asked Captain Halstead, looking significantly at Powell Seaton.
“It sets me to thinking hard,” replied that gentleman, gravely.
Hepton glanced with natural curiosity from one to the other. Then, finding that he was not to be enlightened as to what had happened ashore, he soon stepped aft again.
“Here’s what you want to know, I reckon,” announced Joe, in a low voice, as his head bobbed up out of the motor room. In one hand he held a slip of paper on which he had just taken down a message. “Twenty miles north of us is the Langley Line freighter, ‘Fulton.’ She’s headed this way, and coming at fourteen knots.”
Skipper Tom received the paper, studying the position and course as Joe had jotted them down.
“The Langley boats run to Rio Janeiro, don’t they?” asked Halstead.
“Yes, and every boat of that line carries a wireless installation now, too,” Joe continued. “She’s the only boat that answered my hail.”
“Take the new course, Hank,” called the young skipper to the boy at the wheel, and rattled it off. The “Restless” swung around to a nearly northerly course.
“At her speed, and ours, it needn’t be many minutes before we sight the ‘Fulton,’” judged Halstead. “Hank, you keep the wheel. I want a chance to handle my glasses.”
With the marine binoculars in his hand Skipper Tom soon began to sweep the horizon.
“There’s what the wireless did for us,” he chuckled to Mr. Seaton. “Without our electrical wave we wouldn’t have known, for sure, that there was a Rio boat in these waters this afternoon. And, but for getting the ‘Fulton’s’ position and course by wireless, we’d have swept by to the eastward, away out of sight of the freighter.”
Within a few minutes more the young skipper, by the aid of his glasses, got a glimpse of a steamship’s masts. A few minutes later the upper works of her high hull were visible.
“That’s the ‘Fulton.’ I know the Langley type of freighter build,” Halstead explained, eagerly. “We’ll soon be close enough to see her name-plate through the glass. And – oh! – by Jove!”
Tom waved the glasses with a flourish, pointing, then handed them to Powell Seaton.
“Look right over there to the north-westward, sir, and you’ll make out that drab-hulled seventy-footer. She’s just coming into sight.”
“I see her,” nodded Mr. Seaton.
Captain Halstead took the glasses again, studying both the seventy-footer and the freighter intently, judging their relative speeds and positions.
“Dalton, or his friend, Lemly, has nicely calculated the drab boat’s run,” declared the young skipper of the “Restless,” “Dalton’s craft is in fine position to stop the freighter. But we’ll reach the ‘Fulton’ first, and by some minutes, too, sir. The drab boat looks like a good one, but I believe we’re a shade faster in the stretch.”
“What are we going to do when we overhaul both craft?” wondered Powell Seaton, aloud.
“Why, sir, it will be easy enough to make the ‘Fulton’s’ captain refuse to take any such passenger as Dalton.”
“How?” demanded Mr. Seaton.
“Just inform the ‘Fulton’s’ captain that Anson Dalton is a fugitive from justice. If you do that, the freighter’s captain isn’t going to take any chances on getting into subsequent trouble with Uncle Sam. The captain will simply decline to receive him as a passenger on the high seas.”
Powell Seaton looked very cheerful for a moment. Then a look of dark doubt crossed his face.
“That will be all right, Halstead, unless it happens that the captain of the ‘Fulton’ is a man on the inside of some official affairs down in Brazil. If that be so, then your freighter’s captain may recognize Dalton as a man of consequence – one to be served at all hazards. For, if a steamship captain of the Langley line must be careful to stand well with the United States authorities, he must also be no less careful to keep in the good graces of some of the cliques of Brazilian officers. So what if Dalton goes aboard the freighter, and her captain sends us a derisive toot of his whistle?”
Tom Halstead’s face showed his instant uneasiness.
“If that turns out to be the case, sir,” he whispered, “you’ve lost your last chance to stop Anson Dalton. He goes to Brazil with all the papers for locating the diamond mine, and you and your syndicate friends lose the whole big game!”
CHAPTER XII
THE SEARCHLIGHT FINDS A “DOUBLE”
Yet, though his confidence in success had received a severe jolt, Captain Tom reached out for the megaphone.
“Run in straight and close, Hank,” he ordered. “I want every possible second of conversation before that drab boat gets within talking distance of the ‘Fulton.’”
The “Restless” and the freighter were now within a mile of each other, and almost head-on. The drab boat, about two miles away, had altered its course so as to pick up the freighter at a more southerly point.
“Run to your table, Joe,” commanded the young skipper, “and notify the ‘Fulton’ that we are going to hail her for a brief pow-wow.”
The speed with which young Dawson worked was shown by the fact that, when still half a mile away, the big freighter, hailed by wireless, began to slow down speed. It was plain that she was going to lie to in order to hear the whole of the hail from the “Restless.”
“Great Scott, though! Look at that!” suddenly ejaculated Tom Halstead.
The drab seventy-footer had suddenly gone about, making fast westerly time for the shore.
“Go about after the seventy-footer, Hank,” almost exploded Halstead, in the intensity of his excitement over this new move. “Dalton doesn’t seem to want to try the freighter now. Follow Dalton back to shore.”
“But the ‘Fulton’s’ slowing down. You’re going to show him the politeness of telling the freighter’s captain what it was all about, ain’t you?”
“Let Joe do it,” replied Tom, tersely. “What’s the wireless for?”
Just at this moment Joe Dawson appeared from below.
“Our apologies to the freighter, Joe,” called Skipper Tom. “Tell him we’re after the drab boat. Tell him that our game is to stop a fugitive from getting out of the United States.”
Joe again appeared just as the freighter began to make full headway once more.
“Captain Carson sends you his compliments from the ‘Fulton,’ Tom, for chasing the fugitive off.”
“And now, we’re going to chase that fugitive in,” uttered Halstead, grimly. “By George! Look at the way that drab boat is beginning to travel. Joe, we can’t let her lose us in this fashion.”
As the “Fulton” passed out hull down, and then finally vanished on the southern horizon, the chase after the drab seventy-footer became lively and exciting.
“Can you make out Dalton aboard of her?” asked Powell Seaton, as Tom stood forward, leaning against the edge of the forward deck-house, the marine glass as fast to his eyes as though glued there.
“No, sir. If Dalton is aboard, he’s keeping out of sight in the cabin.”
“Did you see, when the drab boat was more head-on, whether Lemly was at the wheel?”
“The man at the wheel wasn’t Lemly, sir, though I believe that fellow is on board as the actual captain,” Halstead answered.
“Humph! Is the Drab going to get away from us?” questioned Hank, wonderingly. “My, look at her bow cut water!”
“She’s a faster boat than I thought,” Tom responded. “But we don’t mean to let her get away. Joe, how are we going on speed?”
“I couldn’t get another revolution out of the twin shafts without overheating everything,” Dawson replied, seriously. “Honestly, Tom, if this speed doesn’t suit, I’m afraid we’ll have to make the best of it.”
“Then don’t lose a single inch by bad steering, Hank,” Halstead directed, looking around at his helmsman. “Whenever you want relief, let me know.”
For five miles the drab seventy-footer kept her lead, though she did not seem able to increase it. That craft was still heading shoreward, and now the low, long, hazy line of the coast was in sight, becoming every minute more plain.
“They’re going to head straight for the shore, unless they’ve some slicker trick hidden up their sleeves,” declared Tom Halstead.
“I wonder that they’re running so hard from us,” mused Powell Seaton.
“Most likely, sir,” responded the young skipper, “because Dalton and Lemly believe we have officers aboard. Of course they know – or suspect – that warrants are out charging them with stealing the ‘Restless’ the other night.”
“Suppose Dalton and Lemly are not aboard that boat?” challenged Mr. Seaton, suddenly.
Tom Halstead’s lower jaw sagged for just an instant.
“Of course, there’s that chance. We may have been fooled, and we may be chasing a straw man in a paper boat right at this minute, sir. Yet, if Dalton were out on the water, with his stolen papers, he’d want to get nowhere else but to Brazil. If he isn’t on the water, then he’s not trying this route to your Brazilian enemies, and we might as well be out here as on Lonely Island.”
As the boat in the lead neared the coast Halstead again kept the marine glass to his eyes.
“There’s a little river over yonder,” he observed.
“Yes; I know the stream. Hardly more than a creek,” replied Mr. Seaton.
“Any deep water there, sir?”
“For only a very little way in. Then the stream moves over a pebbly bottom like a running brook.”
“Then it looks, sir, as though Lemly – if he’s aboard – plans to run in there and hustle ashore.”
“Or else stay and fight,” hinted Powell Seaton. “The place is lonely enough for a fight, if the rascals dare try it.”
“Hepton!” summoned Halstead, a few moments later. “Don’t you think you’d better get up your rifle? You don’t need to show it, but someone may send us a shot or two from the drab boat.”
Hepton sprang below, bringing up both rifles. Crouching behind the forward deck-house, he examined the magazines of both weapons.
“We’re carrying load enough for a squad o’ infantry,” laughed Hepton, showing his strong, white teeth. “Let those fellers on the Drab try it, if they want to see what we’ve got.”
The seventy-footer was shutting off speed now, going slowly into the mouth of the little river. Almost immediately afterwards her reverse was applied, after which she swung at anchor.
Tom, too, without a word to Hank, who stood by the wheel, reached over, slowing the “Restless” down to a gait of something like eight miles an hour.
“What’s the order, sir?” he asked, turning to Mr. Seaton. “Are we to go in and anchor alongside?”
“I – I don’t want to run you young men into any too dangerous places,” began Powell Seaton, hesitatingly. “I – I–”
“Danger’s one of the things we’re paid for,” clicked Tom Halstead, softly. “It’ll all in the charter. Do you want to go in alongside?”
“I – I–”
Bang!
The shot came so unexpectedly that the motor boat boys jumped despite themselves. Hepton cocked one of the rifles, and was about to rise with it, when the young skipper of the “Restless” prodded the man gently with one foot.
“Don’t show your guns, Hepton,” murmured Tom. “Wait until we find out what that shot was meant for.”
No one now appeared on board the drab seventy-footer. There had been no smoke, no whistle of a bullet by the heads of those on the bridge deck of the “Restless.”
“That was intended only to make us nervous,” grinned Captain Tom.
“Or else to show us that they have fire-arms,” suggested Seaton.
“Well, sir, I’m headed to go in alongside, unless you give me other orders,” hinted the young skipper.
“Cover about half the rest of the distance, then reverse and lie to,” decided Powell Seaton. He now had the extra pair of marine glasses, and was attentively studying both the boat and the shore nearby.
Tom took the wheel himself, stopping where he had been directed. So neatly was headway corrected that the “Restless” barely drifted on the smooth water inshore.
There was now remaining less than an hour of daylight.
“I think I understand their plan, if Dalton is on board,” whispered Mr. Seaton to his young captain. “Dalton is waiting until it is dark enough to slip ashore.”
“Hm! There’s one way you could stop that, if you want to take all the risk,” ventured Halstead, grinning thoughtfully.
“How?”
“Well, if it’s the plan of anyone aboard the drab boat to slip on shore under cover of darkness, then I could put our tender overboard and row Hepton to one bank of the river with his rifle. Returning, I could row you to the other shore, you to carry the other rifle.”
“That would be a bold and open move,” agreed Mr. Seaton, gasping at first, then looking thoughtful. “But look at that shore, Halstead. See the thick trees on either bank of the river. Hepton and I couldn’t watch a lot of stretch on both banks.”
“With our help from the boat you could, sir.”
“Again, how?”
“Why, it’s shallow enough to drop anchor right here, Mr. Seaton. Then, as soon as it grows the least bit dark, we boys could keep our searchlight turned on the drab boat so that you and Hepton could see every movement on her decks. From a quarter of a mile off you could see anyone swimming ashore and run to stop him. There’s no difficulty about it, sir, except the risk.”
“Hepton, I must talk that over with you,” cried Powell Seaton. “I don’t feel that I have any right to run you into too certain danger.”
But Hepton smiled again in a way to show his white teeth.
“Don’t worry ’bout me, Mr. Seaton. I feel big ’nough to take care of myself, and I enlisted for the whole game, anyway.”
“You could keep watch right from this deck,” Halstead added. “But then, if anyone slipped ashore from the Drab, you couldn’t get on shore fast enough to follow through the woods. You’d lose the trail right after the start.”
“Even if I were on shore, and Dalton walked right by me, what could I do?” pondered Powell Seaton. “Of course, I know the sheriff of the county would take him, for going aboard this boat and breaking it loose from the dock the other night. A United States marshal might arrest Dalton, on my request, for piracy in sailing away with the boat. But would I have a right to seize Dalton and hold him – even if able?”
“You can follow him until you do run Dalton into one of the law’s officers,” proposed Halstead.
“I believe I’m going ashore, anyway, to see what happens,” announced Mr. Seaton, after giving the matter a little more thought.
“But let me go ashore, first, on the other bank,” begged Hepton. “Then you can take second chance, sir.”
“Very good, then,” agreed the charter-man.
With the aid of his mates, Captain Tom had the anchor overboard, and the small tender alongside in a jiffy. Hepton stepped down into the smaller craft, carrying his rifle so that it could be seen. Tom himself took the oars to row.
“I’d better put you in on the bank to the left,” whispered Halstead, and Hepton nodded.
They passed within forty yards of the stern of the drab boat, yet not a single human being appeared on that mysterious craft.
Having put Hepton on shore, Halstead rowed back for Mr. Seaton. Embarking this second passenger, Tom, this time, rowed a little closer to the seventy-footer lying at anchor in the river’s mouth. Now, the head of a man unknown to either of them showed aft.
“Where you-all goin’ with so many guns?” this man asked, in a half-jeering tone.
“Night hunting,” retorted Tom, dryly, not feeling guilty of a lie since he was certain the other would not believe him.
Landing Mr. Seaton on the other river bank, the young captain of the “Restless” returned to his craft.
By now it was nearly dark.
“We may as well see how the searchlight is working,” Joe Dawson suggested.
“Turn it on them, and sweep it around,” responded Halstead.
The strong glare of light was found to be working satisfactorily. Dark came on quickly, still without any more signs of life aboard the Drab than had already been observed.
“Supper time, surely,” announced Hank, in a glum voice.
“Don’t bother about that to-night,” objected the young skipper. “Slip down into the galley and make sandwiches enough for all hands. We can eat and watch —must, in fact, if we eat at all.”
After the sandwiches had been made and disposed of the Motor Boat Club boys began to find the swinging of the light on the drab boat, on the water and on either river bank, to be growing rather monotonous.
“I wish something would happen,” grumbled Hank.
“Now, don’t start a fuss about that,” yawned Joe. “Something is likely enough to start up at any second.”
“It has started,” whispered Tom Halstead, swinging the searchlight, just then, across the Drab’s hull. “Look there!”
Two much-muffled figures, looking nearly identical, and each of the pair carrying a bag, appeared on deck amidships, one standing on each side of the deck-house. Then, as quickly, by their sides stood two other men who sprang to lower the two small boats that hung at davits. One muffled man and one helper embarked in each boat, the helper in each case rowing swiftly to either bank of the river.
“That’s a queer game, but a clever one,” muttered Captain Tom, swinging the glaring searchlight and watching.
“It’ll mix up Mr. Seaton and Hepton all right,” grimaced Joe Dawson. “Each will wonder whether he has Dalton on his side of the river, to follow.”
Now, as quickly, the two boat-tenders rowed back to the Drab, and the boats were triced up in a twinkling.
“Say, they’ve got their anchor up!” cried Hank Butts, in a breathless undertone. “They’re going to scoot out on us.”
“Then I’m ready to bet,” muttered Tom Halstead, “that neither of the muffled men that went ashore was Anson Dalton. They must be trying to throw our crowd off the trail, and now that seventy-footer is trying to get off with Dalton still aboard!”
Whatever the plan was, the Drab was now backing out of the river mouth and swinging around. So far none of her sailing lights were in evidence. She looked more like a pirate craft slinking out into the night on an errand of dire mischief.
Once out of the mouth of the river, the Drab swung around, then began to move ahead. By this time her prow was head-on for the “Restless,” as though aimed to strike the latter craft amidships.
Then, as the Drab’s speed increased, Tom Halstead vented excitedly:
“Jupiter! They’re out to cut us in two while we ride here at anchor!”