The Dreadnought Boys on Aero Service

The door was flung open. Merritt, Kennell and Muller entered. At a word from Muller the powerless Ned was shoved and half carried through the portal. Then he was propelled up the companionway stairs.

"Are they going to chuck me overboard?" he found himself wondering.

A swift glance showed him that the sloop was anchored in a small bay. The sky was clear and a bright moon showed the surroundings to be sand dunes and desolate barrens.

"Is the boat ready?" he heard Muller ask.

From over side, where the sloop's dinghy was floating, came a response in the affirmative. The next instant Ned found himself tumbled from the sloop's low side into the small craft. The fall bruised him considerably, but if his captors had expected him to make any outcry they were deceived. He uttered no word of complaint, although, what with the tightness of his bonds and the jouncing his fall had given him, he was in considerable pain.

Herr Muller, Chance, Merritt and Kennell dropped into the boat after him, taking the places of the two men who had unlimbered it from the stern davits.

Evidently their plans had been prearranged, for Chance and Merritt fell to the oars without uttering a word. Muller and Kennell, grim and silent, sat in the stern.

It was a short row to the shore, and presently the bow of the boat grated on a sandy beach.

"Chuck him out!" growled Herr Muller.

Ned was tumbled unceremoniously out on the sands. In the moonlight he could see that the men in the boat were keeping him covered with pistols. Muller leaped out by his side.

"Keep him covered while I cut him loose," Ned heard Muller grate out.

The anarchist bent over him and severed his bonds.

"What on earth is he doing that for?" wondered Ned. But he was duly grateful as he felt his limbs free once more.

The task of cutting the ropes completed, Herr Muller lost no time in jumping back into the boat. But he need not have feared Ned, the lad was too stiff and sore to do more than feebly stretch his limbs. As soon as Muller was on board, Chance and Merritt laid hold of the bow of the boat and shoved off. They leaped nimbly on board as the little craft floated.

As they fell to their oars Muller stood up in the stern and shouted something back at Ned. The boy could not catch all of it, but he was to realize its import before long. All his ears could get of the message was something about "Island – rot there!"

Then came the rhythmic splash of oars as the boat was pulled swiftly back to the sloop. After a while Ned, although the effort made his cramped limbs wince, managed to get to his feet. He was just in time to see the sails of the sloop being hoisted and the little vessel, as they filled, stagger and move out toward the open sea once more.

"And poor Herc, wounded and alone, is on board her," was Ned's bitter thought; "but, thank goodness," he murmured the next instant, "I'm on land and free, and it won't be long before I find some means of running down that sloop."

He sat down and chafed his ankles and wrists, and after a while was able to move about freely. As soon as he did so he struck off across the sandy dunes on which he had been set ashore. A few minutes of walking brought him to a broad arm of water. It flowed swiftly under the moonlight.

A sudden flash of fear shot through Ned. He gave a slight shiver as an alarming idea shot through his mind. But he shook off his presentiment and struck out once more. It was not till he had made the third circuit of the shifting, grass-grown dunes that he realized, with a flash of horror, the bitter truth of his situation.

The inexplicable fact of his freedom and of his bonds being cast off was fully explained now.

Herr Muller had marooned the lad on a desolate island. It was cut off from the shore by a swift flowing arm of water, its current so broad and so rapid that even such a strong swimmer as Ned did not dare trust himself to try to cross it.

By a stern effort of will Ned repressed a desire to cry aloud. Was this to be his destiny? To perish on a sandy islet off the Atlantic Coast, while the sloop forged ahead on her errand of destruction?

CHAPTER XXI

A STRIKE FOR UNCLE SAM

How long it was that Ned sat reviewing the situation in all its bearings he never knew. But it must have been a considerable period, for, when he began to take notice of his surroundings once more, the first flush of an early summer's dawn was visible behind him as he faced what he judged to be the mainland.

The light showed the character of the country across the broad channel which separated him from it to be much the same as that of the island on which he had been marooned by the anarchists. It was criss-crossed with sand dunes till it resembled a crumpled bit of yellow parchment. Scanty, spear-like grass grew in hummocks on the undulations. As the light became stronger sea birds began to whirl about him, screaming weirdly.

Ned gazed seaward. Far out on the horizon was a smudge of black smoke. It was too great in volume for one vessel to have made. The cloud reached as far as the eye could see; as if a gigantic and dirty thumb had been swept across the sky line. To Ned it meant one thing.

"The fleet has passed down the coast on its way to Blackhaven," he mused. "Oh! for a chance to get to the mainland."

For a time he was in hopes that some fishing craft, or small boat, might pass within hail. But nothing of the kind occurred.

"I've got to get something to eat pretty soon," thought Ned, who was beginning to feel faint, "or – hullo! where have I seen that log before?"

His gaze was riveted on a big spar that was drifting idly through the arm of sea that swept between him and the land.

"I saw that fellow go through here last night; the tide must have turned and it's drifting back. Well, that settles it. There's almost as much water and current in there at low water as at high."

He fell to pacing the beach moodily. Once in desperation he waded into the turbid water and essayed to swim. But he was instantly swept from his feet, and a strong undertow seized on his legs and drew them down. When, panting and trembling, he stood once more on shore, he resolved not to risk his life in that manner again.

"An elephant couldn't swim that," he said to himself sadly.

All at once he looked up, from one of his despairing moods, to see something that caused him to choke and gasp with hope. Bobbing about on the water, not a hundred yards from the shore, was – of all things – a small boat!

Ned watched it fascinated.

Would the current drift it within his reach, or would it be carried tantalizingly past him? At the moment he gave little thought as to how it came to be there. It was enough for him that it was a boat, and offered – providing he could reach it – a means of getting to the mainland.

In an agony of apprehension he watched the little craft as it came on, dancing merrily on the choppy ripples of the inlet. Now it shot in toward the shore, as if it meant to drive bow-on upon the beach, and then, as Ned sprang forth to grasp it, the current would sweep it out of his reach. At last it was abreast of him, and in the next second it had passed beyond. Ned grew desperate.

"Better die in the effort to get to land than perish here of starvation and thirst," he thought.

Without bothering to kick his shoes off he sprang into the water, which was deep right up to the margin of the shore, and swam out after the boat.

In a flash he felt the undertow grip him. He struck out with every ounce of reserve strength that he possessed, but the current proved the stronger of the two. Ned, weakened by his long fast and rough experiences, found himself being rapidly drawn under.

Fighting every inch of the way he was gradually submerged. With a last effort he struck out again, but the final struggle proved too much for his already depleted muscles.

The boy was sucked under like a straw.

Where his head had appeared a second before, there was now nothing but the whirl of the waters.

Suddenly, just as it felt as if his lungs must burst, Ned was shot up to the surface once more. Too weak to strike out he flung out his hands in a desperate effort to clutch at anything to sustain his weight.

His hands closed on something solid that buoyed him up refreshingly. It was the gunwale of the boat!

Ned hung limply to her side, getting back his strength as she glided along. After several minutes he felt equal to the effort of trying to board her. He kicked his way round to the stern and clambered over the transom.

Once on board he lay languidly on the thwarts for some time, too much exhausted even to move. But by-and-bye, his strength began to trickle back. He raised himself and looked around him. About the first object his eyes lighted on was a bit of crumpled paper in the bottom of the craft.

"Maybe this is some sort of a clew as to how the boat happened along so providentially," thought Ned.

He opened the paper, scanned the few words it contained, and then his jaw dropped in sheer amazement. The words of the note were in Herc's big, scrawly handwriting.