The Motor Boat Club in Florida: or, Laying the Ghost of Alligator Swamp

“If I go much faster,” called Joe, dryly, “I’ll blow out a cylinder head.”

“Take a chance,” Halstead urged. “We’ve got to crawl up on that other craft.”

“I can make out her signal mast,” announced Henry Tremaine.

“Then keep that stick in sight, sir. There’s one nasty trick the ‘Buzzard’ might play on us if she got far enough in the lead,” explained the young skipper.

“What trick is that?”

“If she’s running close enough to shore, she might succeed in putting Dixon on land, then the ‘Buzzard’ could head out on her cruise again. If that happened, every throb of our propellers would be carrying us further and further from Oliver Dixon and his booty.”

“Good heavens, yes!” agreed Tremaine. “Well, I’m holding that signal mast steadily.”

“Does she seem to be nearing land?”

“Not yet. I judge her course to be southward.”

“Let me have the glass a second,” begged Halstead, jamming the wheel spokes with his knees as he reached out for the glass.

He took a long, intent look.

“Yes; she’s holding her southerly course,” Tom declared.

“Are we going to catch up with her!”

“I don’t know, yet,” Halstead admitted. “The ‘Buzzard’ is a fast boat. Whether we can catch up with her only the next two hours can tell. We’ve got a mighty good boat under our feet, Mr. Tremaine.”

“We need one!” cried that gentleman.

It being none of their affair, particularly, for the present, the two Tampa officers were lounging in deck chairs aft, smoking quietly. The ladies, however, stood just behind the men, as close to the bridge deck as they could keep without interfering with the handling of the craft.

“Let me have the glass again, please,” begged Halstead, ten minutes later. “Yes, I thought so,” he continued, after looking. “That line on the water near the horizon is the ‘Buzzard’s’ hull showing once more. Then we must be creeping up on her.”

“Want me to take the wheel, Cap’n, for a spell?” – hinted Jeff Randolph.

“Not just now,” vouchsafed Tom Halstead. “Just now straight steering counts for as much as the speed of the propellers. You may be a better helmsman than I, by a good deal, but I can’t take a single chance for the next hour.”

In the next half hour, during which the Tampa harbor was left far behind, the hull ahead loomed up no larger. It remained an all but indistinct line on the horizon.

“If Mr. Dixon is on that boat, do you think he knows we’re after him?” Ida Silsbee asked.

“He must have more than a suspicion,” Tom Halstead grinned.

“What an awful feeling his must be, then!” exclaimed the girl, shuddering.

“Are you sorry for him!” asked Mrs. Tremaine, slowly.

“Only in the sense that I’m sorry for any man who yields to the temptation to turn thief,” replied the girl, slowly.

As Joe Dawson thrust his head up through the hatchway his chum at the wheel could see that the young engineer was much disturbed.

“Are we crowding your motors too hard, Joe?” inquired Halstead.

“They’re mighty warm,” Dawson admitted.

“Any danger of exploding a lot of gasoline gas?” demanded Henry Tremaine.

“I won’t just say that,” replied Joe, hesitatingly. “But – ”

“But what?”

“If I keep up this overheating one or both of the motors may be put out of business.”

“Is that all?”

“It would ruin a pair of good engines.”

“If that’s all, boys,” responded Tremaine, “don’t let it worry you. If you hurt any engines, or damage your boat in any way, I’ll make good for it. I want to catch Dixon, and get that stolen money back. But, above money and every other consideration – at no matter what expense – I feel that I must overtake and punish the man who so fearfully abused my confidence and trust!”

CHAPTER XXIII

DIXON’S COWARDLY ACT

IN the next half hour the hull streak of the “Buzzard” became large enough for all aboard the “Restless” to see it with the naked eye.

“We’re surely gaining,” cried Tremaine, joyously.

“Not enough, sir,” replied Tom, shaking his head.

“What do you mean, lad?”

“Why, sir, if we don’t begin to gain faster, soon, then night will come down on us in a few hours, and we won’t be able to make out enough to keep that other boat in sight. She could change her course and slip away.”

“But her lights? It promises to be clear weather to-night.”

Anxious as he was, Captain Tom Halstead did not entirely succeed in suppressing a grin.

“An outlaw boat – a pirate craft, such as the ‘Buzzard’ is when engaged in a trick of this kind, isn’t likely to carry any visible lights at night.”

“Then we – ”

“We’ll have to, sir. This is an honest boat, sailing under the law. Only United States naval or revenue people, on board, could legally authorize this craft to sail at night without lights, and then only under stress of great need.”

“We have police officers on board.”

“They don’t count in an excuse for sailing at night without masthead and side lights showing,” Captain Tom replied, gravely. “The whole story is told, sir, when I say that our only chance lies in getting so close to the ‘Buzzard’ before dark that, lights or no lights, she can’t give us the slip in the dark.”

“Then the chances are all against our success, aren’t they?” inquired Mrs. Tremaine.