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

Swish-sh-sh! Now, the rain began to drive down in great sheets, illumined by two faint flashes of winter lightning. Immediately afterward came a rush of wind from the south that sang loudly through the rigging on the signal mast.

“Now, we’ll soon be in for it in earnest,” muttered Tom Halstead, taking the wheel from his chum and casting an anxious look for the next “red eye” from the revolving light over on Tortugas.

Voices sounded on the after deck. Henry Tremaine was calling to his wife and ward to get on their rain coats and come up for a brief look at the weather.

“Joe,” muttered the young skipper, sharply, “go back to those people and tell them the only place for them is going to be below. Tell Mr. Tremaine he’d be endangering the ladies to have ’em on deck, even for a minute or two. Push ’em below and lock the after companionway, if you have to!”

Joe easily made his way aft ta carry out these instructions. Hardly had Dawson returned when another and greater gust of wind overtook the “Restless.” Her nose was buried deep in the water, as she pitched. Then, on the crest of the following wave, the little craft’s bow rose high. The full gale was upon them in five minutes more – a wind blowing fifty-five miles an hour. Running before the wind the cruiser steered easily enough. Tom could manage the wheel alone, though Joe stood by to lend a hand in case of accident or emergency.

Up onto deck stumbled Ham Mockus, clutching desperately at the deck-house and life-lines.

“Fo’ de Lawd’s sake, dis shuah gwine finish us!” yelled the steward in terror. He was so badly frightened, in fact, that both boys felt sorry for him.

“Don’t you believe it,” Captain Tom bellowed at him. “We’ve been out in a heap sight worse gales than this.”

“In dis boat?” wailed Ham, hoarsely.

“Right in this boat, in one worse gale,” replied Halstead, thinking of the September northeaster experienced on the other side of Florida, as told in “The Motor Boat Club and the Wireless.”

“But Ah reckon ole Marse Satan didn’t gwine ride on dat gale,” protested Ham Mockus.

“Nor on this gale, either,” rasped Halstead, sharply.

“Den yo’ don’ know,” retorted the steward, with an air of conviction. “Yo’s all right, Marse Tom, but yo’ ain’t raised on dis west coast like Ah wuz.”

“Get below,” counseled Joe Dawson. “You’ll drown up here, Ham.”

For, by now, the decks were awash, and there was a threat that, at any moment, the great combers would be rolling fairly across the bulwarks. Dawson drove the black man below, forcing him to close the motor room hatch.

Five minutes later, however, the hatch opened again, and Oliver Dixon appeared in rain coat and cap.

“I thought you might need an extra hand up here,” volunteered Dixon, speaking in a loud voice to make himself heard over the howling gale. “So I told the ladies I’d come on deck for a while.”

“No, we don’t need anyone, thank you,” Tom shouted back at him. “We’ll soon be past Tortugas, and then we’ll be in open waters for hours to come.”

Yet Dixon showed no intention of returning below. Tom Halstead did not like to order him below decks. Dixon, making his way to where he could lean against the cabin deck-house, was not likely to be at all in the way.

“There’s no accounting for tastes,” muttered Joe, under his breath. “If I were a passenger on this boat, and had a snug cabin to go to, that would be good enough for me. I wonder why I dislike this fellow so?”

By the time that they had the Tortugas light well astern Captain Tom jerked his head slightly, backward, then glanced meaningly at his chum before looking straight ahead.

“Yes; we’re in the open,” nodded Joe. “Good!”

Yet the gale, if anything, was increasing in severity. Staunch a craft as she was, the “Restless” creaked almost as though in agony. Timbers will act that way in any heavy sea.

“Take the wheel, Joe!” shouted Skipper Tom, presently. “My arms ache.”

And well they might, as Joe knew, for, with such a sea running, the wheel acted as though it were a thing of life as it fiercely resisted every turn.

As Dawson stepped into place, bracing himself, and with both strong young hands resting on the spokes, Tom Halstead, holding lightly to one of the life lines, started to step backward to the deck-house. Just then a great, combing wave broke over the boat, from astern, racing the full length with fearful force. Joe Dawson, hearing it come, partly turned to meet it. Halstead was caught, lurching as he let go of the life line to clutch at the deck-house. Dixon’s foot shot out, tripping the young skipper. Losing his footing and deprived of grip at the same instant, Tom Halstead rose on the billow as it swept along.

Over the port side went the great mass of water. It would have carried Skipper Tom with it, all in a flash, but Joe, dropping the wheel and diving to hit the port bulwark, threw his hands upward, clutching desperately at his friend’s leg.

Then Dawson held on – how he gripped!

A moment more and the force of that invading billow was spent. Joe, panting under the strain of that fight against tons of water in motion, drew Halstead to him in safety.

But the “Restless,” with no hand at the wheel, was lurching around into the trough of the sea. The next wave might engulf her.

Sure that his friend was safe, Joe Dawson sprang to the wheel. While he was still fighting with the steering gear, Tom Halstead stood at his side. Between them, not without effort, they put the bobbing little cork of a cruiser on her course, once more, on that seething, boiling stretch of waters.

“Can you hold her, Joe?” panted Tom, huskily, in his friend’s ear.

Dawson nodding, Tom stepped back to Dixon, who regarded the young captain with curiously blazing eyes.

“I think you’d better go below, sir,” shouted Halstead.

“Why – why – do you mean – ?”

“I mean nothing,” retorted Tom, dryly, “except that the deck is no place for you in this weather. We can handle the yacht better if all passengers are below.”

“But – ”

Captain Tom’s eyes gleamed resolutely.

“Will you go below, sir, or shall I have to call the steward to help me put you below? I mean it, Mr. Dixon. I’m captain here!”

Gripping at the lines, Dixon sullenly made his way to the motor room hatch. Halstead swung it open, gently but firmly aiding his passenger below.

“Did he trip you?” asked Joe, when the hatch had been closed and his chum stood beside him.

“It’s an awful thing to say, and I guess he didn’t, but I almost thought so,” Halstead shouted back.

“He’s bad, I think,” growled Joe, which was a good deal for that quiet young engineer to say. “Yet I can’t see any earthly reason for his treating you like that.”

“Nor I, either,” admitted the youthful sailing master. “Oh, of course he didn’t mean to. The whole thing is too absurd!”

Ten minutes later, feeling that it would be better to go below and see how the hull was standing the severe strain, Halstead called to Ham to stand by Joe on deck. Then Tom went below.

Once down there, it struck him to step through the passageway. There was a peep-hole slide in the door opening into the cabin. Halstead stood there, shifting the slide so that he could look beyond.

“If the ladies are still up,” he told himself, “I can see how they are bearing the excitement. If they look very scared, I’ll go in and try to put some courage into them.”

As Halstead looked through the small peep-hole, he saw Tremaine and that gentleman’s wife and ward seated at the further end of the cabin table, bending over a book that Tremaine held open. At the sideboard stood young Dixon.

“Now, what’s he doing?” wondered Halstead, curiously.

With the water bottle in one hand, Oliver Dixon was pouring into it a few drops from the vial he had placed in his vest pocket in the late afternoon.