by Roy J. Snell
CHAPTER XX THE CHASE
They had just circled the last pleasure yacht anchored before the islandand were squared away for a trip down the bay, when their attention wasattracted by a small motor boat apparently stranded in mid-channel.
"The ferry will run them down if they don't watch out," said Ruth,reaching for their ancient brass field glass.
"It--well, now what?" She dropped the glass to stare at the boat with thenaked eye. "It's your little friend the Secret Service man from WitchesCove," she told Pearl. "There are three men with him and they seem no endexcited. One is trying frantically to get the engine going. The otherthree are waving wildly at us. Head her in that way. Give her all thesail."
Pearl swung about. In an incredibly short time they were within hailingdistance.
"That boat can sail some, can't she?" the little man shouted.
"She can," said Ruth through cupped hands.
"Come alongside and take us on board. They're getting away." The SecretService man swung his arm down the bay, where through the light fog asecond motor boat was just passing behind the island.
"Who's getting away?" Ruth asked in some astonishment as they came closeup.
"The bombers--the smugglers--the--the wild rascals, whoever they may be,you know as well as I." The man was in a great state of perspiration."They just left old Fort Skammel."
The three girls stared as if they had seen a ghost.
"They can't have," said Ruth as soon as she found her voice. "They'redead, blown into a thousand pieces by their own dynamite."
"Strange," puffed the little man as he scrambled aboard the _Flyaway_,followed by his three companions.
"Let her drift," he said as he saw Ruth eyeing the stalled motor boat."Someone will pick her up. There's important matters afoot. What's onemotor boat more or less?"
"Dead! Blown to pieces!" he exclaimed as soon as he had taken three deepbreaths. "Show us you are sailors, and we'll prove to you that they areneither dead nor blown to pieces. I saw that wild looking fellow with thetangled black hair and shining eyes, saw him plainly."
"The man of the face-in-the-fire," Ruth said to Pearl, as she set the_Flyaway_ to skimming up the bay. "The very one. Must be. What do youknow about that!"
Not one of the three knew what about it, so they were silent until theytoo had rounded the island and saw the fleeing boat, a low, dark affairof moderate speed, popping along dead ahead.
"Well, will we overhaul them?" the little man asked anxiously.
"Will if the wind holds. May drop any time," said Ruth. "Little fog. Mayburn off. May thicken. Can't tell." With a boy's cap jammed tight overher head, she stood there swaying with the boat and giving her every inchof sail she'd carry.
"It's to be a race," she told herself, "a race between the _Flyaway_ andthat motor boat." There was something altogether unusual about the wholeaffair. If these were the men, if indeed they had escaped the storm andthe explosion, as indeed they appeared to have done, then the _Flyaway_,which they had attempted to destroy along with the three of them, washunting down the very ones who had meant to destroy her.
"Good old _Flyaway_!" she whispered. "Do your best!"
"We'll catch them," she told herself a short time later. "And then?" Shedared not think what might follow. These were desperate men. If caught,they would serve long terms in prison. They would not surrender without abattle.
It was strange the thoughts that passed through her mind as they spedalong. Now she was thinking of that secret room in old Fort Skammel. Howwas it heated? Were the silks still there? If the men were captured, whatthen? The silks would be confiscated by the customs office.
"There's some sort of law that gives the finder a share," she toldherself. "We found them right enough." She thrilled at the thought ofowning a room half filled with silk dresses and bolts of silk cloth.
A moment later she was talking with the little Secret Service man,joining him in an effort to unravel the tangled web of mysteries that hadbeen woven about them.
She spoke first of the ancient wood carrying schooner, of its darkforeign skipper and the bales of cloth in the hold. The little man seemedastonished.
"There," he said, "I think you are entirely wrong. Did you ever happen tolook at that skipper's hands?"
Ruth had not.
"They're hard as pine knots and the muscles of his arms are like woodenbeams. You don't get a man like that for smuggling or stealing. They lovephysical labor too much and the contentment that comes with it."
He agreed with her when she said that the smugglers had a hand in thedestruction of _Black Gull_. That the cache in the old fort was theirs,neither of them doubted.
When Ruth spoke of the dark seaplane Pearl had seen off Monhegan on thatstormy night, he seemed greatly surprised and excited.
"Are we doing the best we can?" he asked suddenly, wrinkling his brow andlooking up at the sail.
"Our level best," said Ruth. "And if the wind holds it is good enough.See, we have gained half the distance already."
It was true. They had now come so close to the fleeing craft that theywere able to make out moving figures on her.
Lifting the glass, Ruth studied the sea and the power boat for a moment.Then, quite suddenly she dropped the glass. She had looked straight intothat dark visage, the face-in-the-fire.
"How can one explain it?" she said, as a shudder ran through her stoutframe.
"Explain what?" the little man asked.
Ruth told him of their harrowing experience of the previous day and ofthe tremendous explosion at sea.
"There is no explanation at present," he said quietly. "There may neverbe any. We who spend our lives delving into hidden mysteries know thathalf of them are never solved."
In spite of the realization that they were off on a perilous mission,Ruth felt a comforting warmth take possession of her. Only yesterday,with every hope apparently gone, she had been drifting on a sailless,mastless boat out to sea in the face of a storm. Now, with that sameboat, she was treading on the heels of those who had willed her death.The end of all the summer's excitement and mystery was near.
But what was this? A thin film of smoke rose from the power boat ahead.Ten seconds had not passed before this had become a veritable pillar ofblack towering toward the sky. "Their boat is on fire!" she cried.
"Smoke screen," said the little man, still calm. "There! There! See? Theyare taking to their dory! We'll get them now."
"But what is that a little way over there to the right, close to thatlittle rocky island?"
All eyes followed the direction she had indicated. Then as one, theyexclaimed:
"A seaplane! A seaplane! The dark, trans-Atlantic plane! We have lostthem!"
That the men should escape now seemed inevitable. The seaplane was movingrapidly across the water. Soon she would be upon the dory from thesmoking schooner. A hasty scramble aboard her, and they would rise tospeed away at such a pace as no sailboat ever knew.
Ruth was ready to sit down and cry. She had risked so much. She hadexperienced such terrible things. She had hoped and hoped again. Trulyshe had come to know what life was. And now--
But again a surprise leaped at them from the air. The thunder of anairplane motor, not that of the dark seaplane, but another, struck theirears. As it doubled and redoubled in volume Ruth thought of the young airscout who had assisted her in saving Betty's life off Green Island, and agreat surge of hope welled up within her.
