CHAPTER XIV THE CHASE
Although Nicky had put a brave face on a bad situation, all three chumsrealized how grave was their danger. Their word had been acceptedwithout question and they were given the freedom of the ship, after itscrew had been summoned to the cabin and a vote taken. Only one member,the engineer, put in a word of dissent to Don Ortiga’s suggestion thatthey start at once for the archipelago.
“There’s that revenue cutter,” he reminded his mates.
“Her!” said Tew, sneeringly. “Ain’t we got plenty of ways to show herour heels?”
Nicky and his fellows wondered what these ways might be. They were todiscover at least one of them.
They were given a plentiful meal in the cabin; the hi-jackers faredwell, evidently, for the meal comprised fresh eggs, four apiece, freshmilk, since none of them cared much for coffee, white bread, corn poneas a second choice, and rice pudding.
The cook was an affable, smiling colored man from Miami, the flourishingtourist resort in Florida, who found his share of illicit gain morealluring than the wages of an honest chef in a hotel.
Besides the cook and Don Ortiga and his first mate, Tew, there were fourdeck hands who also rowed the boat with muffled oars and paddedoarlocks, and who helped to load and unload what they carried; alsothere was the engineer and Nelse. The latter, they found out later, wasonly aboard for a certain purpose, not one of the crew.
While they noted the precision machinery for driving the boat, and sawthe novel way in which the exhaust was deadened by being run through alarge pipe through a sheathed channel in the hull, into a speciallydevised muffler which completely broke up the explosive force of thespent gases and silenced their noise, the chums marveled at the painsthat had been taken to make a once innocent pleasure yacht into a craftsuited for breaking its country’s laws.
Nicky reiterated his wish that they could do something to bring thelawbreakers to justice, but Tom, again cautious, urged him not even tothink of it just then.
Mr. Neale, their chief in the beginning of the expedition, hadoverhauled Sam’s sloop with the aid of the revenue cutter’s men, hadlearned Sam’s side of the story, found Sam contrite but afraid toreturn, had discovered that the United States men could take no actionagainst the Jamaican, and let Sam go his way rejoicing. The revenuecutter then returned toward the keys in order to land Mr. Neale at abase from which he could carry on his search for the missing boys.
But the cutter did not get there that night.
Nicky, Tom and Cliff stood on the foredeck of the hi-jackers’ ship asthe anchor was quietly drawn up and the engines began turning over,their twin-four cylinders thudding with little outward noise.
“Here we go!” Nicky whispered. “Off on our first piratical cruise.”
“Off to be shot,” Cliff corrected, “if that revenue cutter they spokeabout ever see us.”
“They wouldn’t shoot us,” Nicky protested.
“They wouldn’t mean to,” Tom agreed. “But they will chase—and this boatwill run. That means a shot across the bows and more if we don’t ‘heaveto’—which this crew won’t do if they can see a chance to escape.”
“What are they ‘advertising’ for, then?” demanded Cliff. His comradesstared at him; for answer to their unspoken question he pointed upward.
Looking toward the tip of the short spar that served for a signal mastand for the radio aerial for the small receiving set with which thecabin was equipped, capable of tuning-in short wave stations and theNavy broadcasts of weather, signals, and so forth, they all saw a smallelectric bulb glowing finely into the dark night.
“Well—I’ll be—switched!” gasped Tom. “Now why should they show a light?”
“It’s the law—” began Nicky, but he stopped, realizing that these men,all of whom were silent but fierce-looking, obeyed no law as to lightsor other rules of the seaways.
The lookout just forward of their group was staring toward the horizonas they nosed gently forward out of a small strait between a key and asection of the bay shore. He turned and made some sort of signal with atiny, blinking flashlight in his cupped hands.
Instantly the wheel went hard over, the vessel swung in a long curve andbegan to straighten her wake as speed increased on a straightaway rundown the shore.
“I see her,” Nicky whispered, directing his chum’s gaze. “There’s a boatand she’s heading for us.”
Far off across the water there came a dull report. At the same instantNelse came on deck, gazed for a moment, said “Couldn’t be better!” toDon Ortiga, and walked aft rapidly, while the captain stood watchinghim. Nicky left the group, took the other side of the cabin and slippedalong the deck. To his amazement Nelse was dropping into a small boatthat was towing. A deckhand pushed a long, slim pole, with something atits tip, into the small boat.
Nelse lifted the pole which looked like a rather long fishing pole, andseemed to be stepping its butt in a place in his forward thwart.
Forward Tom and Cliff watched with straining eyes, as did the Don.Another vivid, but distant flash was followed by a dull report and therecame a faint “plash-thunk!” in the water far ahead.
At the same moment a sailor loped forward.
“All clear, sir,” he muttered.
Don Ortiga turned, lifted a hand. Tom, his eye cocked aloft, saw thattheir masthead light disappeared instantly. He turned to see if Cliffhad noticed it, and then saw what Nicky, at the stern, had alreadyguessed.
Nelse’s boat was a decoy. His stout pole once firmly stepped his ty-linewas dropped off the cruiser’s stem, and as the masthead light winked outhe, in some fashion—it was too dark for Nicky to see how—completed anelectrical circuit to a small, similar light on his pole, so that, ifthe cutter missed the light for an instant she would pick it up againand yet it would be the decoy and not the real ship she would thereafterpursue.
“But what will happen to Nelse?” Nicky wondered when he rejoined hisfriends and gave them his information.
“He will row into some little inlet, unship his pole, maybe pull hisboat up on shore and hide.”
Don Ortiga furnished the information.
“But haven’t they seen us?” demanded Nicky.
“We are low and gray and hard to see. It remains to be learned,” thecaptain replied. He watched for an interval while their boat with onlyher propeller thrash to carry a message of her direction, held onswiftly.
The ruse had failed. They could see the cutter holding a courseslantwise to their own! They must have been seen in spite of thecamouflaging color.
Tew was with Ortiga.
“There’s a chance—in the channel to port!” he grunted.
“Take it!”
Then began the most breathless and thrilling half hour or more that thechums had ever been through.
Swinging sharply on her heel, so to speak, their lithe greyhound doubledback into a narrow lip between two clumps of cocoanut or mangrove, itwas too dark to see which they were; it seemed as though she wererunning smash into the land but there was a way that opened thinlybefore her scudding bow.
Once the keel groaned and rasped on coral, and once a bough was snappedon a tree leaning far over the water by the short mast.
Then they were in open water. Would the cutter know where they went?Would she follow?
They squared away and ran, full speed, down the Sound, and with keelalmost aground, shoved—literally grated their way—over a bar and intothe outer waters again.
And the cutter had not followed!
She had done better! Anticipating some such double-back among thewaterways, she had eased her way and lay beyond the reef. With a word ofmuttered anger, the captain rushed for the pilot house in the forwardend of the cabin.
The small cannon on the revenue cutter spoke with its sharp bark but thephantom cruiser did not heave to. Instead her engines fairly shook herhull in their race for freedom.
Fast as she was the revenue cutter was not
fast enough to overtake theother. Her gun spoke, but at a distant range and on a bad target—thetail of a flying ship without lights is no easy thing to hit in thedark!
The cutter dropped back slowly and then, sure that they were no longerin sight of her watchful crew, the hi-jackers flung their tiller harda-starboard, heeled with the swerve and their speed, heard the grate ofcoral on one side, and—were again in a hidden cove!