Chapter 9

ENGINEER PERK ON DECK

Everything else being in readiness Jack and his muscular comrade started to work the deck winch in order to get the anchor "apeak," as Perk called it, being desirous of showing off with his limited knowledge of things nautical.

"She's amovin' okay, old hoss!" gasped Perk who had been doing considerable straining, anxious to display his ability as a mudhook lifter. "A few more good pulls an' we'll have the old gink where we want it."

The task being completed, the sloop began to move backward, very much like those fiddler crabs Perk had watched retreating before his attack on one of the sandy Florida beaches.

"Looks like I'd better go aboard our ship and get away from here before anything happens to disable a wing," Jack hastened to remark, sensing possible trouble which would be in the nature of a serious calamity just then.

"Go to it then, matey," Perk told him, light-heartedly enough, "I'm ready to do my stuff as a half-cooked engineer. Don't worry a bit about my gettin' there with both feet if the bally motor only holds together. Don't like its looks any too much, but then Lady Luck seems to be givin' us a heap o' favors, so we're goin' to finish after the Garrison style--heavy on the home stretch."

Before Perk reached the last word his chum had gained his seat in the cubbyhole of the amphibian, and almost immediately called out:

"Cut that rope and let me get away, partner--hurry up before I get another and harder bump!"

Ten seconds afterward the airship was entirely free from contact with the drifting sloop. Then came the roar of the motor showing that Jack had given her the gun. Instantly there was a forward movement of the amphibian, which increased rapidly until it was rushing along with great speed presently lifting its nose toward the heavens and leaving the rolling surface of the gulf, soared aloft in repeated circles.

Perk, after seeing that his pal was well on his way, turned his attention to his own job. He had no particular trouble in coaxing the engine to start, although it did considerable "grunting" as though its joints might be rusty and in need of lubricating oil, thus telling that the late skipper had allowed his engineer to neglect his duties in a climate where the salt in the air always rusted the inside of gun barrels, machinery of all descriptions, and in many ways played havoc with exposed metal parts.

However, after the engine got well warmed up it began to work more smoothly so that Perk lost some of his first anxiety.

"Goin' to get along okay I guess," he assured himself and then, keeping the prow of his vessel headed due south, he found time to try and discover where Jack and his soaring crate might be.

The engine was a gas motor and well supplied with an abundance of fuel, since the winds on their recent voyage around the Florida Keys must have been favorable as a whole and with the motive power idle there had been no drain on the gas.

Perk was feeling prime at that particular moment in his checkered career. It afforded him much pride to thus be in sole charge of a captured rum-runner with a cargo of contraband aboard. Then, too, all doubts concerning his ability to serve as an engineer were already dissipated for the sloop was making fair time and carried a bone in her teeth, as the white lines of foam running out on either side attested.

Perk was softly singing to himself some marine ditty he had picked up in the course of his adventurous life afloat and ashore and which had for a title "Rolling Down to Old Mohea"--it thrilled him to the core to feel that he was luckily able to afford Jack just the assistance the other required so as to perfect his plan of campaign.

Now he believed he could glimpse the amphibian overhead--yes, the moon, poking her nose out from behind a bank of clouds, allowed him to make certain--Jack had swung back and was circling, so as to keep the sloop within range of his vision.

"Just like a guardeen angel," mused the enraptured Perk, standing at his post and sending frequent curious as well as proud glances aloft, "as he told me he meant to be. Say, ain't this simply great stuff we've struck?--never felt so joyous in all my life as when I smashed them two tear-bombs down on the deck here an' busted up that fightin' mob. Zowie! how quick they got a move on, every single man but the one lone dickey we found knocked out down below-stairs. Ev'rything movin' along like silk--who cares whether school keeps or not, with us boys on the top wave o' success."

Then he concluded to stop premature boasting, knowing very well that as in a game of baseball nothing is settled until the last man has been put out.

So the voyage down the coast continued steadily enough, the minutes running along into hours, with faithful Perk keeping steadfastly at his new job.

From time to time he would find the plane hovering directly over his head, and was able to catch certain signals which he could understand because of a previous arrangement he and Jack had.

Although the moving sloop was not over a mile or so from the shore line, it was next to impossible for Perk to catch a fleeting glimpse of land, so as to get his bearings.

"Huh!" he told himself at one time after he had received instructions to draw a bit further toward the open gulf, as he was approaching some point of land jutting into the water, and thus making a shoal possibly covered with coon-oysters, on which he was apt to pull up hurriedly with disastrous results, "this here is like flyin' blind at a five thousand-foot ceilin',--Jack, he c'n see the land by usin' the night glasses, so it's a good thing I c'n get tips from him right along. Gee! this sure is gettin' some monotonous, keepin' this old motor hummin' when it's on the blink so bad. Must be a wheen past midnight, I'd say, an' we ought to be clost to them Ten Thousand Islands by now."

He had been keeping close watch on the stars and although making no claims to being a first-class woodsman, Perk could tell the time of night by the heavenly bodies setting one after another, which would account for his late confident assertion that morning could not be so very far distant.

Once only during all this time did Perk happen to see a far distant light out at sea. It interested him more or less and naturally caused him to speculate as to whether it might have any connection with the great game in which he and Jack were now engaged. Everything he had ever heard or read connected with the Mexican Gulf seemed to pass in review through his active mind--there was a halo of romance hovering about that historical sheet of salt water and while Perk was not much given to flights of fancy, he found himself picturing some of the thrilling scenes he had recently read about, after learning that the next locality in which he and Jack would play their adventurous part was along the Florida Gulf Coast.

Then he suddenly found himself listening intently, for above the pounding of the old motor, with an occasional "miss" to break the monotony, he fancied he had caught the signal Jack was to give him when the time arrived for making a turn toward the coast.

"Bully boy, Jack!" Perk cried out when he found that he had not been deceived. "I'll be right pleased to drop this tiresome job an' think myself some lucky to miss havin' the tub run on a reef, or the bally motor kickin' off an' quittin' cold. Yes, an' there's what looks like a bunch o' cabbage palms stickin' their tops against the sky-line. Better slow up, Perk, old scout, afore you hit some stump or get aground off shore."

So he throttled the motor a bit and fairly crept along. He even found himself wishing he had fixed things so that the prisoner might stand by with a sounding pole in the bow of the sloop to sing out the depth and give warning of sudden shallows but it was too late now to attempt such a thing, even if he had dared take the chance of the fellow jumping overboard and either drowning or getting ashore to give warning as to the menace hovering above the operations of the far-flung smuggler combine.

But fortune was still kind and presently Perk found himself softly gliding past the outermost mangrove islands. Here, he remembered, it was his duty to come about and lay to until Jack could drop down and taxi over to where the sloop lay so as to consider their further plans in the coming dawn.