The Motor Boat Club off Long Island: or, A Daring Marine Game at Racing Speed

“Do?” uttered Captain Tom. “That’s the same craft that hung about us yesterday, plainly trying to nose into our secrets. The same craft that afterwards tried to play a trick on us to make us reach East Hampton late. And just now the fellows aboard the stranger laughed at us. What am I going to do? Why, sir, we’re going after her, going to overhaul her, if there’s the speed in the ‘Rocket.’ We’ll even try to board that stranger, Mr. Moddridge, and see whether Francis Delavan is aboard against his own will!”

CHAPTER VIII
THE DASHING STERN CHASE

NOT a single objection did the man of nerves offer. Ordinarily he might have jumped with fear at the proposal to go at fast speed through the fog. Though the mist was already lifting a good deal, as it had done on the day before, there was still enough of a curtain ahead to make it more than just risky to go rushing along.

In the white bank ahead the racing boat was already lost to sight. Captain Tom raised his hand to pull the cord of the auto whistle.

“If I show ’em where I am, though,” he thought, at once, “the man handling that other craft will know enough to swing off onto another course. He can leave me behind easily enough.”

The auto whistle, therefore, did not sound. Captain Tom understood fully the risk he was taking in “going it blind” – and fast, too – right on this pathway of Long Island navigation. But he made up his mind that he would very soon begin to sound his whistle, whether he sighted the other craft or not.

“If they haven’t changed their course I’ll soon be in sight of them,” the young skipper reflected, anxiously. “Oh, that this fog lifts soon!”

Having guessed the other boat’s course, Tom could follow it only by compass, as any other method would be sure to lead him astray.

Both boats’ engines were equipped with the silent exhaust. While not absolutely noiseless, these exhausts run so quietly that a boat’s presence at any considerable distance cannot be detected through them.

One thing was certain. At present the fog was lifting rapidly. All would soon be well if another deep bank of mist did not roll in off the sea.

Jed, watching the gradual going of the fog, was straining his eyes for all he was worth for the first glimpse of that racing craft. Engineer Joe had not further increased the “Rocket’s” speed, for Tom, if he was getting somewhat off the course of the other boat, did not want to be too far away when the lifting of the white curtain should show him the enemy.

“Hist!” The sharp summons caused Tom Halstead quickly to raise his glance from the compass. Jed Prentiss, standing amidships, for he had run back, was pointing over the port bow. Tom could have yelled with delight, for off there, in the edge of the bank, now some eight hundred feet distant, was a low, indistinct line that could hardly be other than the racing boat.

“Ask Joe to kick out just a trifle more speed, not much,” muttered Captain Halstead, as Jed, his eyes shining, moved nearer.

Under the new impulse the “Rocket” stole up on that vague line, which now soon resolved itself into the hull of the racing craft.

By this time the chase was discovered from the other motor boat. There was a splurge ahead; the hull dimmed down to the former indistinct line. After a few moments the racing craft was out of sight again.

“Crowd on every foot of speed you can, Joe,” was the word Jed passed from the young captain. Dawson, crouching beside his motor, was watching every revolution of the engine that he was now spurring.

And now the fog began to lift rapidly. A thousand feet ahead, driving northeast, the racing craft could be made out. She was running a few miles away from the coast and nearly parallel with it.

During the last few minutes Eben Moddridge had been strangely silent, for him. Even now, as he stepped up beside the wheel, he was far less nervous than might have been expected.

“Can you overtake that other boat?” he inquired.

“I’ve got to,” came Captain Tom’s dogged reply, as he kept his gaze sharply ahead.

“She seems like a very fast craft.”

“She’s faster than this boat,” replied Halstead, briefly.

“Good heavens! Then she will show us a clean pair of heels,” quivered Mr. Moddridge.

“That’s not so certain, sir.”

Tom was so sparing of his words, at this crisis in the sea race, that Mr. Delavan’s friend felt himself entitled to further explanation.

“You say she’s faster, but intimate we may catch her,” muttered Mr. Moddridge. “How can that be?”

“Motor engines sometimes go back on a fellow at the worst moment,” Captain Tom explained. “That may happen to the other fellow. He may have to slow down, or even shut off speed altogether.”

“But that might happen to us, too,” objected Mr. Moddridge.

“It might, but there are few engineers on motor boats that I’d back against Joe Dawson,” Halstead continued. “Then again, Mr. Moddridge, the fellow who is steering the boat ahead doesn’t handle his wheel as slickly as he might. By the most careful steering I hope to gain some on him.”

So rapidly was the fog lifting that the skippers of the two boats could now see the ocean for a half mile on either side, ahead or astern. The racing craft, after a few minutes, put on still another burst of speed.

“Ask Joe if he has every bit crowded on?” called Captain Tom. Jed called down into the engine room, then reported back:

“Joe says he may get a little more speed out of the engine, but not much. We’re pretty near up to the mark.”

So Tom Halstead, whitening a bit at the report, setting his teeth harder, devoted his whole energies to trying to steer a straighter course than did the boat ahead.

“There’s some kind of a rumpus on the stranger,” called Jed. “Look at that fellow rushing for the hood forward.”

Plainly there was some excitement out of the usual on board the stranger. Jed, snatching up a pair of marine glasses, swiftly reported:

“Someone is trying to fight his way out of the hood, and the others are trying to force him back. Whee! It looks as though someone had just hurled something out overboard from the hood.”

“Did you see anything strike the water?” demanded Captain Tom.

“It looked so, but it’s a big distance to see a small object, even through the glass.”

“Keep your eye on where you saw that something go overboard,” directed Captain Tom Halstead. “Try to pilot me to that spot. It may be a message – from Mr. Delavan.”

It was a difficult task to scan the water so closely. But Jed did his best, and, after a few moments, called back excitedly:

“Better slow down your speed, captain. I think I see something dancing on the water. It’s bobbing up and down – something.”

Jed Prentiss seemed almost to have his eyes glued to the marine glasses, so intently did he watch.

“Half a point to port, captain,” he shouted, presently. “Headway, only. Joe, can you leave the engine to bring me a hand-net while I keep my eye on that thing bobbing on the water?”

Dawson leaped up from the engine room, going swiftly in search of the desired net.

“Half a point more to port, captain,” called Jed. “Steady – so! Thank you, old fellow” – as Joe handed him the net. Eben Moddridge had now hurried to the port rail as the boat drifted up alongside the thing that Prentiss was watching. It proved to be a leather wallet, floating on the waves. So neatly did Jed pilot that, soon, he was able to lean over the rail, make a deft swoop with the net, and —

“I’ve got it!” he shouted.

Captain Tom Halstead instantly gave speed ahead through the bridge controls, trying to gain as swiftly as he could the very considerable distance that had been lost. “It’s Frank’s wallet – his own. There’s his monogram on it,” cried Eben Moddridge, his voice quaking.

“See if there is any message inside,” shouted Tom, still keeping his gaze on that hull ahead, while Joe bounded below to nurse his motor on to better performances.

Mr. Moddridge’s fingers trembled so in trying to open the soaked wallet that Jed took it from him.

“Your friend’s money,” reported Prentiss, taking out a compact mass of banknotes and passing them to Mr. Moddridge. “Here are some cards, too, and that’s all.”

“See if anything is written on any of the cards,” Tom directed.

“Nothing on any of them,” Jed quickly reported.

“It’s Frank Delavan’s wallet, though,” cried Eben Moddridge.

“And Mr. Delavan is aboard that boat, a prisoner,” returned Tom Halstead. “The best he could do was to throw the wallet overboard in the hope that we’d see it and know where to look for him. There was only a small chance of our seeing it, but Jed did, and we won. Confound ’em! They seem to be gaining on us!”

As it became more evident that the stranger was gradually pulling further ahead of the “Rocket,” Eben Moddridge’s face began to twitch, his breath coming shorter and faster.

“M-m-must we lose?” he faltered.

“No race is lost until it is finished,” Captain Tom replied, tersely.

“But you can’t overtake that boat?”

“It’s a speedier craft than ours, but I’ll follow ’em, even if they get hull down on the horizon,” Halstead retorted. “I’ll keep to the course if they beat us out of sight. I won’t give up while we’ve any gasoline left.”

The stranger was now a mile ahead. Tom figured that, in an hour, the other boat’s lead would be very likely increased by four or five miles more. Surely enough, two or three miles more were gained in the next thirty minutes. Then —

“Hurrah!” shouted Tom Halstead. “Oh, if it’s only as good as it looks!”

“What is it?” queried Eben Moddridge, brokenly, not even rising from his chair.

“See how the other craft is slowing her speed. It looks as though her engine had given out at just the right time for us.”

Indeed, the stranger seemed rapidly coming down to bare headway. Then she barely drifted. The “Rocket,” eating up the miles, swiftly gained on the other motor boat.

“It looks like a real enough break in their engine,” reported Jed, his eyes once more at the glasses. “They’re rushing about under the hood. I can see that much. They seem dreadfully bothered about the engine.”

Tom had steered the “Rocket,” by this time, within a half mile of the stranger’s pointed stern.

“Now, we’ll run down upon them!” glowed the young skipper.

“What will you do when you do get alongside?” asked Eben Moddridge, tremulously.

CHAPTER IX
PLAYING A SAILOR’S TRICK

“FIGHT, if we have to,” was Tom’s laconic reply.

“Oh, dear, I do hope that won’t be necessary,” cried Moddridge, in deeper agitation. “All quarrelsome noises and thoughts get upon my nerves to a dreadful extent.”

“We won’t fight unless they put us to it,” answered Halstead. “And, of course,” he added, with a slight smile, “we may get the worst of it. We may get ourselves fearfully whacked about.”

“Oh, dear!” groaned Moddridge again.

Nor was the nervous man one whit reassured by seeing Joe, after slowing up the engine somewhat, step up on deck bearing a couple of wrenches. As for Jed Prentiss, that youth had laid down the marine glasses to pick up a formidable looking boat-hook.

Even with her lessened speed the “Rocket” was now within less than a quarter of a mile of the racing craft.

“Confound it! Now, what does that mean?” vented Tom, disappointedly, as he beheld one of the men aboard the other craft leap to his post at the wheel. In another moment the answer came. The racing boat was moving through the water again. Every instant her propeller churned up the water a little faster.

“They’ve fixed their engine,” quavered Captain Tom. “What we’ve now got to find out is whether their motor is strong enough to get them away from us.”

For some three or four minutes the two craft remained about the same distance apart, despite the fact that Joe Dawson, who had dropped down once more into the engine room, was coaxing his motor along as skilfully as he could. Then, at last, the stranger began to draw ahead.

“The lucky scoundrels!” gritted Tom. “They’re able to go at least pretty close to their full speed. See ’em eat up the miles again!”

“At least, then, there’ll be no fight,” declared Mr. Moddridge, in a tone of relief.

“Nor will your friend and our employer have any chance to get back to his own boat at present,” retorted Tom Halstead. Ordinarily he could stand this nervous man’s agitated spells, though just now they wore upon the young skipper’s patience.

For a few miles the chase continued, the stranger gaining all the while. The two boats had been running, lately, about five miles off the Long Island coast. Now, the stranger could be seen heading much more to the northward, as though intent on making the coast.

“Jed,” directed the young skipper, “see whether you can pick up the mouth of Cookson’s Inlet ahead of the stranger.”

“There’s a break in the beach over yonder,” reported Prentiss, soon. “It doesn’t appear to be more than fifty feet wide.”

“It’s sixty-two feet,” responded Tom Halstead, who had made a hard study of all this part of the Long Island coast “And confound them if they try to go in there.”

“Why?” inquired Eben Moddridge.

“It’s mighty shallow water, the other side of the inlet,” Captain Halstead explained. “That other boat probably doesn’t draw more than two and a half feet of water. Our draught, on account of our very heavy engine, is nearer nine feet. I don’t know just how far we can follow them in that little bay. In some places the water isn’t over four feet deep.”

“Then they are not playing fairly,” muttered Moddridge, in a tone of deep disgust.

“Rascals rarely do play a fairer game than they’re obliged to do,” answered Tom, with a queer little smile. “However, all we can do is to stick to them as long as we are able.”

With two boats going at such high speed it was not long before the mouth of the inlet was made. The stranger, however, passed through about four minutes ahead of the “Rocket.”

Once in the bay the motor boat boys found themselves not far from a low, sandy island, on which were a few trees and three small cottages.

“There they are, passing the other side of the island,” hailed Jed, pointing to the top of the stranger’s single mast, visible for an instant before it disappeared behind a rise in the sandy surface of the island.

“It looks as though they’re just running around the island,” muttered Tom Halstead. “We won’t follow; we’ll meet ’em.”

Putting the “Rocket” about, the young skipper steered for the other end of the island. In a few minutes he passed around it, to discover that the strange craft had put about, and was going back the way it had come.

“I think, sir,” explained the young skipper, turning to Mr. Moddridge, “that the shortest way out of this hide-and-seek game will be to keep right after that pirate’s stern.”

“All right,” nodded Moddridge, hesitatingly. “Yet why do you call that other boat a pirate?”

“Any boat deserves the name that sails on queer business, and is even afraid to show her name-plate at her stern,” Halstead rejoined.

The stranger still led, in that race in the narrow way between the island and the main shore.

“Good enough, too,” growled Halstead, as his keen eyes noted a slight change in the color Of the water ahead. “They are leading us into the shallows. Jed, get the lead, run up to the bow and cast it in a hurry!”

Even as he gave the order, the young skipper, his hands trembling slightly from vexation, turned the speed control to lessen the “Rocket’s” headway.

Jed, poising the lead, made the neat cast of a practiced sailor, letting the flannel-tagged line pay out rapidly between his fingers. At the instant the line slackened Prentiss, half-turned toward the helm, sang drawlingly back:

“And a qua-arter, two!”

That signified two and a quarter fathoms, or thirteen and a half feet of water under the bottom of the cruiser, which drew about nine feet.

Rapidly hauling in, while the “Rocket” now hardly more than crawled along in these shallows, Prentiss heaved the lead once more.

“And a scant – two!” he reported. Joe Dawson, leaping to the deck, ranged up alongside of Jed. The water had a shallower look ahead.

“A-a-and three-qua-arters – one!” came the hail from the leadsman.

Ten and a half feet meant a foot and a half to spare under the deepest point of the cruiser’s keel.

Once more Jed poised the lead for the heave, but Joe, taking a more knowing look, shouted back:

“Reverse her, captain, or you’ll poke her nose in the mud!”

Instantly Captain Halstead’s hand flew to the reversing lever. Slowly the motor boat stole backward. The stranger had passed around to the seaward side of the little island, and was making for the inlet.

“They’re playing with us!” grumbled Skipper Tom. “The fun’s all theirs, for they’ve got the faster craft.”

Just as soon as the “Rocket” had once more five feet of water to spare under her hull Halstead decided to head about, the way he had come, and put on all speed for the inlet. Yet, so expensive of time was this proceeding that, when the Delavan boat once more glided through the inlet, the stranger was three miles out to sea, heading south.

“That fellow must be laughing at us,” faltered Eben Moddridge.

“Of course he is,” flared Tom Halstead. “And I could grind my teeth, if that sort of work would do any good.”

“W-w-what can we do?” stammered the nervous one.

“Only keep up the chase until one or the other breaks down, or runs out of gasoline,” replied the young skipper, doggedly.

For almost an hour more the boats continued to head south. All but the high parts of Long Island were below the horizon. Yet Halstead, calling Jed to the wheel, though still directing the course, believed that he was gaining on the other boat, even if very slowly.

“We’ve gasoline enough aboard,” the young skipper explained to the nervous man, “to keep running for twenty-four hours yet. I hope that other fellow hasn’t.”

“B-b-b-but see here,” quavered Moddridge, a new alarm dawning upon his mind, “if that other crowd should let us get alongside, and th-then s-s-s-shoot at us – it would be awful!”

“That’s a chance we’ve simply got to take,” replied Tom Halstead, coolly, “if we’re to try to reach Mr. Delavan and get him back aboard his own boat.”

“I – I – I couldn’t s-s-stand anything of that sort!” almost screamed the nervous one.

“Then will you get off the boat, sir, and walk?” inquired the young skipper, with perhaps pardonable irritation. This exhibition of weak-kneed manhood made him indignant.

Erelong the stranger was a good twenty miles south of the nearest point on the Long Island coast. Both boats had traveled fast over the gently-rolling sea. The conditions would have been ideal for a race, had the stakes been less important.

“Maybe their gasoline is running so low that those fellows are ready to be reasonable,” grinned Joe Dawson, turning from the stand he had taken near the bow. It could be seen, now, that the stranger was slowing down her speed. Presently she was lying to.

“That must be a confession of a tank low with gasoline,” cried Captain Tom, jubilantly, hastening forward with the glasses. “Steer straight for her, to come up on the port side, Jed.”

Seeing Joe again disappear below, to reappear with a pair of ugly-looking wrenches, Eben Moddridge turned very pale, and next hastened, shakily, to the steps leading down to the after deck. Thence he vanished into the cabin.

“Say,” uttered Joe, disdainfully, “I wish I had his fighting blood!”

Still the stranger lay to, only two men showing in her cockpit. As the “Rocket” came much closer to her possible prey Tom Halstead again took the wheel, while Jed stood close to where his prized boat-hook lay. Tom shut off most of the speed as he ran in closer to port of the stranger. The two men visible aboard the other boat were now standing by the rail, looking curiously enough at the motor boat boys.

“‘Rocket’ ahoy!” hailed one of them, as Tom manœuvred his craft within easy talking-distance of the other. “Have you been following us?”

“Some!” admitted Halstead, dryly.

“Why!”

“To see whom you have aboard.”

“Only us two boat-handlers on board,” replied one of the pair.

“Tell that to the mermaids,” retorted Captain Tom, grimly.

“Don’t you believe us?” demanded the same speaker, the larger of the rough-looking seafaring pair.

“I’m not very good at believing,” was the younger skipper’s reply.

“Then wait until we get slowly under way, and you can come up alongside. I guess you can board us, on this gentle sea, without scraping either hull,” proposed the speaker aboard the racer.

That offer, made in seeming good faith, almost staggered Tom Halstead for the moment. Why the stranger should run away for hours, then suddenly agree to be boarded, was not at once apparent.

“Unless they want to get one of us aboard, or want to try the mighty risky trick of capturing us on the high seas,” reflected the young skipper. “However, all we’re here for is to find and rescue Mr. Delavan. We’ve simply got to try to do that.”

So he nodded, allowed his boat to fall away, then come up alongside the racing boat, now under slow headway.

As the two hulls bumped slightly, Jed Prentiss made fast to the other craft’s rail with his boat-hook. Tom Halstead, with a wrench dropped into a hip pocket out of sight, leaped over the other boat’s rail down into the cockpit.

“You spoke about someone being aboard here?” quizzed the larger of the two strangers. “You can go ahead and find out your mistake. Open anything you want; look anywhere you please.”

Halstead’s first swift look in under the hood showed him only the motor housed there. While Joe Dawson and Jed Prentiss watched keenly, suspiciously, from the “Rocket’s” rail, the young skipper searched minutely under that hood deck. There was not a human being there, nor any trace of late occupancy by any. There were lockers. Tom raised the lid of every one. He might, in his dismayed wonder, have explored the gasoline tank, had he not known that the opening was too small to permit the entrance of a man’s body.

“Through in there? Satisfied?” called the larger of the two men, half-mockingly. “There are two lockers out here, and an after compartment out here in the cockpit.”

As soon as he was satisfied that there was no other possible place under the hood, Halstead accepted the invitation to make a search of the cockpit lockers and storage spaces. Yet it was all quite in vain.

Suddenly, however, the young skipper straightened himself, glaring down at a straight, not very distinct line that ran the length of the cockpit, even extending under the hood. As he looked swiftly up, he encountered the mocking gazes of the two boat handlers.

“That was a slick trick,” Captain Tom admitted, speaking dryly, though with an effort. “That line was made by the dirty keel of a small boat. In Cookson’s Bay, while hidden from us by that little island, you put the small boat over the side, and some of your passengers went ashore. Then you decoyed us all this distance out to sea to have the joy of laughing at us.”

“Blessed if I can guess what the lad means, friend,” said one of the rough pair to the other.

But Captain Tom Halstead, as he leaped back aboard the “Rocket,” and turned to them with flashing eyes, retorted gamely:

“I’m planning to have the pleasure, mighty soon, of showing you the value of the last laugh!”