But it was not; however, it was news of a still more astonishing nature,and, so far as the boys were concerned, almost as gratifying, dearly asthey would have loved to catch Sartorius—or Minory, as we must now callhim. Nat and Joe, who had followed Ding-dong to the wireless shed, bentover him while he answered the call and then switched to his receivinginstruments.
“It’s the fishing steamer, _Hattie and Jane_,” he explained hastily.“You know, Capt. Eli Thompson’s boat, the one that collects fish fromthe fleet. She carries wireless so that she can get quotations andinstructions from her owners even at sea.”
He broke off, and as the dots and dashes began to beat into his earsfrom the _Hattie and_ _Jane_, he wrote swiftly with nervous, flyingfingers.
As they bent over him with open mouths and wide eyes, Nat and Joe burstinto a joyous “whoop!” of delight as they read the message Joe’s penciltranscribed on the pad.
“_Your motor boat_, Nomad, _found drifting. No one on board. Are you allright?—Thompson_, S. S. Hattie and Jane.”
“Gee! I’ll bet the captain thought we were all murdered or something!”cried Joe, gripping Nat’s shoulder, while Ding-dong sent back areassuring message.
“Hush!” cried Nat. “Here’s more coming.”
“_Hawser has been cut. How can you explain?_”
“The hawser cut?” shouted Nat. “Cracky! I see it all now. That fellowcouldn’t run the _Nomad_ himself and means to row ashore. He figured,though, that we might swim out to her and start in pursuit, so he cutthe mooring rope and set her adrift.”
“Oh, for five minutes alone with him!” panted Joe.
“What’ll I say?” asked Ding-dong, half turning.
“Say that we will explain when we see him. Ask him if he will bring the_Nomad_ to Goat Island. Tell him we are marooned here and will pay himwell for the job.”
Ding-dong obediently rapped out the message and then switched to thereceiving set again. They saw him give a reassuring nod as he wrote downon his pad:
“_Will be at Goat Island within three hours. Catch light, and can sparethe time. Is fifty dollars too much?_”
“The old rascal!” grinned Nat, too delighted to be angry at thissomewhat steep figure. “He knows he’s got us under his thumb and sees achance to make a good wad of salvage. Tell him ‘all right,’ Ding-dong,there’s nothing else for it.”
“_Satisfactory. Make all haste you can_,” was flashed back, and thencame “_Good-byes_.”
As soon as Ding-dong had grounded his instruments and taken off his headreceivers there was a scene of wild jubilation in the wireless hut. Theboys whooped and cheered like Indians and joined in a wild war dance.
“Whoopee!” yelled Joe, “there may be a chance of catching that oldfake-whiskered cuss, after all. He’s got a good long start, but whatwith our wireless warnings and with the long row ahead of him, we have afighting chance of overhauling him.”
“And I reckon he won’t be in a desperate hurry, because he’ll neverfigure that we could have such blind luck as to have the _Nomad_ pickedup by about the only wireless craft along the coast that knew her andher owners and could notify them at once of the recovery,” cried Nat.“Boys, it’s one chance in a thousand, but it looks as if luck wasbeginning to run our way again after all our set-backs.”
Within a very few minutes those at the living hut were apprised of thestate of affairs. The effect on every one’s spirits was wonderful. EvenDr. Chalmers and his friend became infected with the excitement of thechase after a man who had proved himself as consummate a rascal as couldbe found on earth.
But in the midst of the jubilation, Joe propounded a sudden questionthat came like a dash of cold water on their hopes.
“Suppose before he cut the _Nomad_ adrift he rifled the trunks and gotthe model?” he exclaimed.
It was a possibility that, strange to say, in the general excitement,had not yet occurred to any one of them.
“In that case, if we don’t find him I am in as bad a fix as ever,”declared the professor blankly. “With the model it wouldn’t take aclever fellow like Minory more than a few days to understand theprinciples of my invention, rush patent papers to Washington and reaphis reward from the unscrupulous capitalists employing him. You see Iwas so afraid of possible leaks that I was waiting till I had everydetail complete before I filed application for a patent. With nobody inmy confidence concerning my work, I have absolutely no proof norwitnesses that the wireless torpedo is the product of my brain. Minory,on the other hand, has the backing of almost unlimited money andinfluence.”
“Humph!” grunted Nat, in a low aside to Joe, “we may be euchered afterall, then.”
“_We!_” rejoined Joe in a rather astonished tone.
“Yes,” was the sturdy reply. “I like this professor and I hate to seesuch a rascal as Minory getting away with a thing to which a man hasdevoted the best efforts of his life. We, Joe—I said _we_—are going tohelp him in every way in our power.”
“Bully for you, Nat. I’m with you to a crisp!” cried Joe, while he gaveNat a slap on the back that almost drove the breath out of the youngleader’s body.
CHAPTER IX.
A STERN CHASE.
In the meantime, from station to station, within a radius in which itwas reasonable to suppose the fugitive would land, the wireless wassending out its waves of alarm. The various stations attached tolife-saving headquarters along the coast took the message and, in turn,telephoned the local authorities of near-by towns. Ding-dong receivedthese assurances through the ether and transmitted them to his friends.Excitement was rife. It looked as if by means of the wireless they hadspread 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. Itwas a long, weary row to the shore, and, as Nat had pointed out, Minory,deeming himself secure from pursuit, would probably be in no particularhurry, but conserve his strength. From the bridge of the _Nomad_ such anobject as a rowboat would be conspicuous for a long distance. If onlyCaptain Thompson hastened his return with the wandering motor craft,they stood about an even chance of capturing Minory themselves. It was asituation that thrilled them, and the time dragged wearily till smoke onthe 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 sightof the returned wanderer the boys set up a ringing cheer. CaptainThompson, a weather-beaten old salt, rowed ashore in the dory that the_Hattie and Jane_ lowered, and received his reward. He pocketed it witha grin, as much as to say, “A pretty good morning’s work”; but the boysdid not grudge it to him. The return of the _Nomad_ meant much more tothem than that.
The dory was loaded up with gasolene, and after two trips between theshore and the _Nomad_, the latter was ready, with full fuel tanks, “toreceive passengers.” Professor Jenkins, still so weak that he had to besupported to the boat, was the first to be taken off. Then the boysclosed up the shanty and the wireless station and within half an hourwere under way, with the _Hattie and Jane_ flying a bunting salute inresponse to the boys’ string of flags which spelled out to the fishingsteamer “Good luck.”
“Now, Joe, keep your eyes peeled,” ordered Nat. “I’d give a whole lot torun 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 anexamination of the professor’s trunks, came on the bridge at this momentwith a dismal report.
As they had apprehended, Minory, before cutting the _Nomad_ loose, hadransacked the trunks. The model was gone, and the doctor feared that toinform the professor of the loss might cause a serious relapse in hiscondition.
It was agreed, therefore, to reply only vaguely to any questions hemight ask. But fortunately the inventor, completely worn out byexcitement and weakness, sank into a deep
sleep almost as soon as he waslaid on the divan below, and they were spared the necessity of evasivereplies to the questions he would have been sure to ask about the safetyof the model.
It must be confessed that when Nat learned the clever and thorough wayin which Minory had carried out the last part of his desperate plan forstealing the fruits of the professor’s inventive faculty, his heartrather sank. Somehow, he did not feel quite so sanguine as he had atfirst that they would succeed, either themselves or through theirwide-flung messages, in capturing the fellow. The remarkable ingenuityhe had shown in his attempts on the wireless torpedo in New York, in hissuccessful espionage of the inventor across the continent, and in hislast coup of getting himself on board the craft on which the man he hadinjured was being conveyed ashore all showed an acute intellect, adepraved sort of genius for carrying out whatever nefarious ends itspossessor had in view. Nat didn’t underrate his antagonist. He knew bythis 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 hislong row, supplementing the work of his muscles, which, despite hisscrawny 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 anxioussolicitude. He was fully aware of how much depended now upon theperformance of the motor. So far it was running sweet and true, with ahumming song that delighted the watchful boy engineer. Oil can in hand,he doused the bearings and moving parts with lubricant from time totime, feeling a shaft collar or an eccentric band to detect symptoms ofoverheating.
The distant coast range, faintly blue and luminous, loomed up throughthe heat haze before long, but although Nat stationed Joe with thebinoculars to keep active and constant watch for the skiff, nothingappeared in the field of the powerful glasses to warrant Joe in givingthe alarm.
Once he saw something black and was on the point of crying out. The nextminute he was glad that he hadn’t. The object proved to be only afloating log with a solemn line of seagulls bobbing up and down on it asit 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 withinthe horizon of the glasses.
“I must admit that it does,” rejoined Nat, “but it’s up to us to keephoping against hope.”
Suddenly a thought came to Joe.
“See here, Nat, unless that fellow is as skillful a boat handler as heis a crook he couldn’t land on the bare coast. The surf would be rollingtoo high even on a calm day like this to permit him to do so even if hetried 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 myopinion he’ll make for some cove.”
“Of which there are none too many hereabouts,” responded Nat. “Let’ssee, 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 familiarwith this coast than it is reasonable to suppose.”
“But having observed what the conditions were along the beach andrealizing that he couldn’t negotiate the surf, he’d be likely to gohunting for such an inlet, wouldn’t he?”
“Sounds reasonable. But the point is just this, why wouldn’t he gotoward Santa Barbara itself?”
“Why, because, if he’s as shrewd as I think he is, he will have guessedthat 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 wirelessfrom the _Iroquois_, that message that got us into all this pickle.”
Before Nat could reply, the sailor whom they had rescued with hisemployers the night before, and who had been standing with Mr. Andersonon the bridge, gave an exclamation.
“I don’t want to give a false alarm, gentlemen, but what’s that objectoff there?”
“Where?” demanded Nat. “Give me the glasses, Joe, quick.”
Something in the sailor’s voice had made him alert and active in aninstant.
He applied the glasses to his eyes and gazed through them for a fewseconds.
“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 shewas headed directly for the distant speck that the sailor’s sharp eyeshad espied.
CHAPTER X.
MORE BAD LUCK.
“Oh, thunderation!”
It was Ding-dong who uttered the exclamation as a sharp crack sounded inthe engine room and he sprang forward to shut off the motor. Aneccentric band had snapped with a report like a pistol, and the _Nomad_was temporarily out of commission.
Down the speaking tube came an impatient query.
“What’s up? What’s happened?”
Ding-dong shouted up a reply.
“How long will it be before you can fix it?”
“About fifteen minutes. Luckily I’ve an extra band handy.”
The stammering boy, as was usual with him in stress of circumstances,had temporarily overcome his impediment in speech.
“Bother!” exclaimed Nat in a vexed tone. And there was good reason forhis impatient intonation. Bit by bit the _Nomad_ had been creeping up onthe solitary rowboat.
Hardly more than a few hundred yards now separated them, and they couldsee Minory, with white, anxious face, straining at his oars—as if anyhuman power could get him beyond reach of the fast motor cruiser! Aheadof him lay an inlet meandering up among some salt marshes. It was WhaleCreek, so called because a huge whale had once been stranded there.
Nat knew that at the mouth of Whale Creek lay shoals and quicksandsamong which the _Nomad_ could not navigate. If they could not cut offMinory before he gained the entrance to the creek, his escape appearedcertain, for the _Nomad_ carried no dinghy and Minory had the whip handof them in the shallow water.
“You’d better give up!” Nat had hailed to Minory across the water. “Evenif you get ashore the authorities are already on the lookout for you,warned by wireless. You don’t stand the chance of a rat in a trap.”
Minory’s answer had been to stand up in the skiff, holding aloft in onehand the model and in the other the plans and calculations that had costthe sleeping inventor below so much effort.
“If you come any closer, down these go to Davy Jones!” he had yelleddesperately.
“To do such a thing would be only to increase the sentence you will getin a court of law!” Mr. Anderson had shouted back indignantly.
“He’s only bluffing!” Joe had rejoined.
It was just at this instant that the unlucky disaster in the engine roomhad occurred. Joe could have cried with vexation.
“Of all the luck!” he exclaimed as the _Nomad_ lost way and came to astandstill, swinging seaward with the outgoing tide. Minory stood up inhis skiff and shook a triumphant fist at them. They turned away fromhim, and the next moment something came buzzing and singing past theirears.
It was followed by a sharp, cracking report. Then came a yell of defiantlaughter.
“The rascal’s shooting at us!” exclaimed Nat.
“Yes; duck quick!” cried Joe, as the revolver was once more leveled.
“You’ll have to get up early to get ahead of me, you whelps!” was theinsulting cry borne over the waters.
Nat’s teeth clenched; his cheeks flamed red. He did not often lose histemper, but the ruffian’s audacity had made him mad clear through.
Regardless of his danger, he sprang erect and faced the man in theskiff.
“We’ll get you yet, Minory!” he shouted.
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For an instant the occupant of the small boat appeared taken aback, andthat for a good reason. Obviously, if they knew his real name, theprofessor must have not only discovered his loss, but recoveredsufficiently to tell the whole story. His acute mind reasoned this outin a jiffy, and it gave him pause. But only for a fraction of time. Thenext minute, with a cry, “Take that, you young cub!” another bullet camesinging and whinging through the air.
“I’ll go below and get the rifle!” cried Joe furiously. “We’ll show himtwo can play at this game; we’ll——”
“Do nothing of the sort,” said Nat calmly; “he can hardly get much of anaim standing up in that cranky skiff, and if he wants to get away he’lldo better by taking to his oars than by blazing away at us.”
“There he goes now,” cried the sailor. “I guess he was so plumb madclear through at the quick tracks we made after him that he justnaturally had to blaze away at us.”
As the man spoke they saw Minory, with another mocking laugh, bend tohis oars once more and row rapidly toward the creek mouth.
“Once let him get in there and we’ve lost him,” cried Nat despairingly.
“Better lose him than have any bloodshed,” declared Mr. Anderson. “Thatfellow is a desperate man, and wouldn’t hesitate to use firearms toprotect himself from capture.”
“It looks that way,” commented Joe. “Whee! Look at him row!”
“Consarn him, I wish he’d bust an oar!” growled out the sailor gloomily.