CHAPTER XX
THE CHASE
They had just circled the last pleasure yacht anchored before the island and were squared away for a trip down the bay, when their attention was attracted 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 the naked eye. “It’s your little friend the Secret Service man from Witches Cove,” she told Pearl. “There are three men with him and they seem no end excited. One is trying frantically to get the engine going. The other three are waving wildly at us. Head her in that way. Give her all the sail.”
Pearl swung about. In an incredibly short time they were within hailing distance.
“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 Secret Service man swung his arm down the bay, where through the light fog a second motor boat was just passing behind the island.
“Who’s getting away?” Ruth asked in some astonishment as they came close up.
“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’re dead, 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 one motor boat more or less?”
“Dead! Blown to pieces!” he exclaimed as soon as he had taken three deep breaths. “Show us you are sailors, and we’ll prove to you that they are neither dead nor blown to pieces. I saw that wild looking fellow with the tangled 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 you know about that!”
Not one of the three knew what about it, so they were silent until they too had rounded the island and saw the fleeing boat, a low, dark affair of 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. May burn off. May thicken. Can’t tell.” With a boy’s cap jammed tight over her head, she stood there swaying with the boat and giving her every inch of sail she’d carry.
“It’s to be a race,” she told herself, “a race between the Flyaway and that motor boat.” There was something altogether unusual about the whole affair. If these were the men, if indeed they had escaped the storm and the explosion, as indeed they appeared to have done, then the Flyaway, which they had attempted to destroy along with the three of them, was hunting 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?” She dared not think what might follow. These were desperate men. If caught, they would serve long terms in prison. They would not surrender without a battle.
It was strange the thoughts that passed through her mind as they sped along. Now she was thinking of that secret room in old Fort Skammel. How was it heated? Were the silks still there? If the men were captured, what then? The silks would be confiscated by the customs office.
“There’s some sort of law that gives the finder a share,” she told herself. “We found them right enough.” She thrilled at the thought of owning 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 had been woven about them.
She spoke first of the ancient wood carrying schooner, of its dark foreign skipper and the bales of cloth in the hold. The little man seemed astonished.
“There,” he said, “I think you are entirely wrong. Did you ever happen to look at that skipper’s hands?”
Ruth had not.
“They’re hard as pine knots and the muscles of his arms are like wooden beams. You don’t get a man like that for smuggling or stealing. They love physical labor too much and the contentment that comes with it.”
He agreed with her when she said that the smugglers had a hand in the destruction 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 that stormy night, he seemed greatly surprised and excited.
“Are we doing the best we can?” he asked suddenly, wrinkling his brow and looking 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 they were 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 into that dark visage, the face-in-the-fire.
“How can one explain it?” she said, as a shudder ran through her stout frame.
“Explain what?” the little man asked.
Ruth told him of their harrowing experience of the previous day and of the tremendous explosion at sea.
“There is no explanation at present,” he said quietly. “There may never be any. We who spend our lives delving into hidden mysteries know that half 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 same boat, 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 of black towering toward the sky. “Their boat is on fire!” she cried.
“Smoke screen,” said the little man, still calm. “There! There! See? They are taking to their dory! We’ll get them now.”
“But what is that a little way over there to the right, close to that little rocky island?”
All eyes followed the direction she had indicated. Then as one, they exclaimed:
“A seaplane! A seaplane! The dark, trans-Atlantic plane! We have lost them!”
That the men should escape now seemed inevitable. The seaplane was moving rapidly across the water. Soon she would be upon the dory from the smoking schooner. A hasty scramble aboard her, and they would rise to speed away at such a pace as no sailboat ever knew.
Ruth was ready to sit down and cry. She had risked so much. She had experienced such terrible things. She had hoped and hoped again. Truly she had come to know what life was. And now—
But again a surprise leaped at them from the air. The thunder of an airplane motor, not that of the dark seaplane, but another, struck their ears. As it doubled and redoubled in volume Ruth thought of the young air scout who had assisted her in saving Betty’s life off Green Island, and a great surge of hope welled up within her.
CHAPTER XXI
ON AIR AND SEA
The scene that followed will remain in the memories of the three girls as long as life shall last. The sea, a thin fog, a great dark plane rising slowly like a black swan from the water, a small American pursuit plane appearing on
the distant horizon.
“Is it our young aviator?” Ruth asked herself, gripping at her breast to still her heart’s wild beating. “Will he be in time?”
Higher and higher rose the giant plane. Nearer and nearer came its little pursuer.
When she had risen to a height of a thousand feet, the dark marauder began thundering away.
But of a sudden, a white gleam appeared above her. The little silver plane was possessed of great speed. The black giant, laden with hundreds of gallons of gasoline for a long journey, was slow in picking up. The tiny pursuer was upon her. The fight was on.
“It’s like a catbird attacking a crow,” Ruth told herself. “What will the end be?”
With a daring that set the girl’s blood racing, the young aviator swooped down upon his broad winged opponent.
“He—he’ll crash into them,” she thought in sudden terror, “He—he has!”
“No! No!” said Betty who, all unconscious of her actions, was dancing wildly about the deck. “There! There he is! He’s come out from behind.”
Again the little plane rose. Again, he came down, this time to the right and all but upon a broad wing of the Devil Bird.
Then came a short, sharp, insistent sound that was not made by motors.
“They—they’re shooting,” said Ruth as a fresh terror seized her. “We must get closer. They may bring him down.”
Gripping a rope, she sent her sail upward, then prepared to glide ahead at full speed.
But now, matters took a fresh turn. So close did the young aviator dive in that the great black plane was set wobbling. It was with the utmost difficulty that she righted herself.
Hardly had this been accomplished when the little plane, with all the ferocity of a bird robbed of her young, was upon her again.
“He’ll be killed!” screamed Betty, now fairly beside herself. “There! There he goes!”
But the little plane did not drop. It wobbled and twisted, turned half a flip-flop, righted itself and was at the dark antagonist once more.
Again the pop-pop-pop-pop of shots.
This time, however, it broke short off as the black plane, after an instant of seeming to hang motionless in air, suddenly went into a tail spin.
“There! There!” Betty closed her eyes.
When she opened them the black plane was gone.
“Where—where—” she stammered.
“Gone to the bottom,” said Ruth solemnly. “We’ll get over there at once. They may rise. It—it’s terrible to think—”
“Poor fellows,” said the little man. “They will never come up. The plane, with her heavy motors and her loaded tanks, took them straight to the bottom. They deserved little enough. They were the enemies of law and order and all government. Since men must live as neighbors, laws of conduct cannot be avoided. They were blind to all this. They saw wrongs in every land; men rich and living extravagantly who deserved to live on hard bread and wear rags, other men living in poverty, and they said, ‘We must destroy.’
“Nothing was ever gained by destruction. Wrongs must be righted by laws, and by instilling into the hearts of all men a feeling of brotherly kindness. Those who will destroy will in the end bring destruction upon themselves.”
The little pursuit plane had come to rest on the sea. For a half hour both plane and sail boat cruised the waters there, but no sign of the missing plane rose from the depths.
When the little plane at last drew in close Ruth saw, with a sudden tremor at her heart, that the young aviator of that other day by Green Island was in the forward cockpit.
“Sorry to spoil your game,” he said, standing up. “But he was about to get away. And that wouldn’t do. Done enough damage already.”
“Quite enough,” said the little man. “We owe you a vote of thanks. You were lucky to escape. There was shooting.”
“They did all the shooting,” said the young man. “I was only trying to force them down for you.”
“Well,” said the little man, “you did that with a vengeance. And now,” he said briskly, “we better get back to old Fort Skammel. These young ladies tell me that there’s a secret cache of silks there. I have no doubt there are papers of great importance there too.”
“Like to ride back with me?” said the young aviator, looking at Ruth. “I—I promised you a trip, you know.”
“Yes,” said Ruth, climbing into the plane.
“We’ll get over to the fort and keep guard there until you arrive,” said the aviator, waving them goodbye as Ruth’s last strap was safely buckled into place.
It was a strange world that Ruth looked down upon as she sped along—her own little world seen from above. Islands, homes, ships, all floated like miniature affairs of paper beneath her. Then, much too soon, they were skimming the bay for a landing.
All was serene and dreamy about old Fort Skammel as the two, Ruth and her pilot, came ashore there. Dragon flies darted here and there. Spider webs drifted by.
“The calm of a Sabbath afternoon,” said the young pilot. “How good it is to be alive!”
“Life,” Ruth replied, blinking at the sun and struggling to reassemble her scattered thoughts, “could not be sweeter.”
An hour later, with the Secret Service man in the lead and an armed guard stationed along the corridors, the little company entered the room of many mysteries.
They were all there, Ruth, Pearl, Betty and even the little city girl who had come over in a row boat. And such a time as they had feasting their eyes on the softness and beauty of the silks laid out before them.
CHAPTER XXII
THE STORY TOLD
A few moments later the men from the revenue cutter were passing boxes and bales of silk up from the strangely snug underground room, and had begun carrying them down dim corridors to the ancient granite dock that had once served the fort.
“Ingenious chaps, those fellows were,” the little Secret Service man said, touching an electric heater. “Ingenious and resourceful. Heated the place with electricity.”
“But where did they get the current?” Ruth asked.
“There’s an electric power cable passing across the island. They wired this place, then waited for a time when the current was off to tap the line, I suppose.”
“So that’s it,” said Ruth.
“There is a great deal more that remains to be explained,” said the little man. “I fancy I shall find it all recorded here.” He patted a great heap of books and papers which he had collected from one corner of the room. “If you young folks wish to come out to Witches Cove rather late in the afternoon, I am quite sure I shall have a lot to tell. Like to come?”
“Would we!” said Ruth.
“Try us,” said Betty, standing on tiptoes in her excitement.
“That’s settled, then. Come in the Flyaway at dusk. I’m sure the three gray witches will be there to greet you. So will I, and my two black cats.”
“It’s a pity,” he said a little later as he stood by the great heap of silks that lay on the dock ready to be transported to the customs house, “that I can’t permit each one of you to select a wardrobe from among these beautiful creations, but the law wouldn’t permit that.”
As their eyes rested on the broken bundles from which rich garments of rare beauty shone through, they felt that he spoke the truth.
That evening, just as the shadows had turned the dark green waters of Witches Cove to pitchy black, the three girls, Ruth, Pearl and Betty, rode into that little natural harbor of many mysteries. Having dropped anchor, they rowed Ruth’s punt silently to the rocky shore, then mounted the rugged natural stairway to the cabin that crowned the crest.
A curious light, flickering and dancing, now waving, now glowing bright, played hide and seek through the cabin’s two small windows. A driftwood fire was burning in the large room of the place.
Before this fire, on the skin of some great bear whose grinning white teeth seemed ready to devour them, sat the little man. On either side of the hea
rth the two black cats sat blinking. Before him was a heap of papers and a thick black book.
“Sit down,” he said, moving over to give them room. Lifting a simmering pot from the hearth, he poured them delicious hot chocolate in cups as blue-green as the waters of Witches Cove.
“We drink to the health of all loyal sons and daughters of Maine,” he said, lifting a cup to his lips.
“It’s all written here,” he said after a moment of solemn meditation. “Written down in this book.” He patted the fat black book.
“It’s strange,” he said thoughtfully, “that men cannot resist recording deeds of daring. Whether they be done for lawful or unlawful purposes, makes no difference. Even the Buccaneers had their historians.
“The author of this,” again he touched the book, “was none other than that dark fellow, whom you called the ‘face-in-the-fire’ man.
“It’s a remarkable story,” he went on. “Lindbergh crossed the ocean once alone, and the whole world went mad. This man made seven round trips from Europe to America and there was not one shout. Because,” he paused—“because almost no one knew. Seven men knew. They dared not tell. He brought them to America one at a time in the gray seaplane in which he today met so tragic a death. Our nation refused them entrance. He brought them. Very soon now they will be found and sent back. But because these men could not pay him, he engaged in silk smuggling. He used the old fort as a hiding place because no one would expect to find him there.”
“But why?” Ruth leaned forward eagerly. “Why did he do all this?”
“He crossed the ocean seven times bringing each time a man,” the speaker went on impressively. “Each time he recrossed the lonely old ocean alone. Think of it! Seven times! An unbroken record!
“Loyalty,” he stared thoughtfully at the fire, “loyalty is a wonderful thing. But loyalty to a wrong cause can bring only disaster.
“This man and his seven friends believed that the private ownership of property was wrong, that your home, your boat, your horse, your dog, yes and perhaps your very father and mother, should belong to the State. That all men should own everything, and no individual anything.”
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