CHAPTER IX.

ADRIFT AT NIGHT.

There was a jarring bump. Something rasped and grated along the keel, sending a shudder through the light timbers of the high-speed _River Swallow_.

Then she raced on as fast as ever. And that was all. Where was the boat whose stern light they had struck? Was she indeed formed of ghostly vapor and had she no tangible fabric?

Ralph, sweating from every pore, and tremblingly grasping the wheel, was half inclined to believe so, as he felt the propellers at last take hold on the reverse motion and the _River Swallow_ begin to back. So startled was he from his accustomed presence of mind, that for a moment or two he felt more as if he were passing through the phantasmagoria of a nightmare than participating in every-day life.

“Wha-wha-what was it?” palpitated Harry Ware, still clutching the rail and staring straight ahead as if he expected to see the form of the ghostly craft emerge once more in front of them.

“Are we going down? What’s up?” came from Percy Simmons below.

“We’re all right, Persimmons,” hailed Captain Ralph, in reply, as his faculties came back with a rush. “Just check your engines, will you? There’s something I want to find out. Malvin!”

“Aye! aye! sir! Narrow escape, sir. I was ’most frightened to death! I thought we were goners,” came back the man’s voice from the bow.

“Well, apparently we have suffered no harm. A trick of some sort has been played on us. I mean to try to find out what it is. You and Hansen attend to lowering the anchor at once. Then get the small boat overboard.”

“The boat, sir? What for, sir?”

“Obey my orders and ask no questions,” shouted Ralph. “Now, then, Harry, you go below. Search thoroughly for a leak. I don’t think there is one, but still I’ll take no chances.”

“But wha-wha-what was it?” persisted Harry. “It must have been a ghost, that craft. We hit it and went right through it as if it had been smoke. I—I’m scared, Ralph.”

“Well, work off your fears in attending to your duty below. We hit something, all right. It wasn’t the boat. I want to find out what it was.”

“Humph! this all comes of going chasing a ghost ship!” muttered Harry, none too graciously, as the anchor chain rattled out and he departed on his mission.

Left alone on the bridge, Ralph concentrated in deep thought for a few moments. Then he galvanized into action.

“Anchor down?”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Lower away on the boat and place the portable search-light in it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Presently came the sound of the ropes running out through the davits which supported a small, light motor tender used by the _River Swallow_.

“All gone?” asked Ralph, as he heard the splash that announced that the tender had struck the water.

“Yes, sir. But if you’ll pardon my making a suggestion, there’s no use waiting round here, sir. The current’s bad, sir, and I doubt if the anchor will hold.”

“I’ll decide that, Malvin. Get the search-light into the tender as I told you.”

“Very well, sir.”

“It’s odd,” mused Ralph, “that that fellow Malvin wants to try to block every move we make to unravel the mystery of that gray motor boat. What can be his motive unless he is interested in her? I’ve got a suspicion that this is a big game we’ve blundered into, but I mean to see it through as far as I can. Dad hates a quitter—boy or man—and I know that when I tell him about to-night’s work he’ll agree with me that I acted for the best.”

But, had Ralph known it, it was to be many days before he would have an opportunity of seeing his father and telling him of the strange events of that night and those that were destined to succeed them.

The _River Swallow_ lay motionless. All about was a black void. Of the gray motor boat nothing was to be seen or heard. In fact, not from the start of the chase, nor on any of the previous occasions that the boys had sighted her, did the motor craft that had proved so elusive and tricky make any sound. From this Ralph argued that she was equipped with an under-water exhaust, a device which silences the otherwise noisy explosions of a gasoline engine.

Harry Ware came back on deck.

“Sound as a dollar,” he reported.

“Good! I thought so, but dared not fail to have an investigation made,” rejoined Ralph.

“But, Ralph, what became of the other craft? What was she, a ghost or a submarine?”

“Neither.”

“What, then?”

“A solid, speedy craft just like this one.”

“But we struck her.”

“We did not. We never touched her.”

Harry Ware gasped.

“Are we all crazy? We hit that stern light and went clean through it.”

“We didn’t even hit a stern light.”

“But we saw it. It was as plain as the nose on your face.”

“We saw a light. That doesn’t prove that it was the gray motor boat’s stern light.”

“What, then?”

“It simply goes to show that those fellows on board her were too smart for us.”

“They played us a trick?”

“That’s what.”

Percy Simmons, being needed no longer at the engines, had joined his companions on deck. He had been an interested listener. Now he spoke.

“They fooled us, eh?”

“Just what I’ve been saying,” rejoined Ralph. “But, see here, let’s get into the boat and go hunting.”

“Go hunting? Say, what’s the matter with you? What are we going hunting for?”

“We’re going a-gunning to find the heart of this mystery,” was Ralph’s rejoinder. “Come on, boys.”

He gave a brief order to Malvin to stay by the _River Swallow_ with Hansen and await their return. Then, with Harry and Percy as companions, he rowed off into the night.

“Keep that search-light playing,” he ordered, referring to the small but powerful lamp on the bow of the tender. The motor was not used, as the tender was light and rowed quite easily. As he rowed, Ralph kept looking around over his shoulder. After some time, during which he had rowed in ever widening circles, with the _River Swallow_ as a focal point, he gave a sharp cry of triumph.

“Ah-ha! There’s what I expected.”

Bobbing up and down on the waves, not many feet away, the search-light showed a strange object. It was apparently a round tub with a pole set upright in it. And such it proved to be on closer inspection, which also disclosed the fact that a lantern, extinguished, was swinging on top of the pole.

“And here’s the clever trick that fooled us into thinking we were overhauling that motor boat,” said Ralph, as he inspected it. “They simply towed this tub with the lantern on the pole for some distance till we thought it was their stern light. Then, when the chase grew too hot, they set it loose with an anchor on it and scudded off, while we ran down the light, foolishly thinking that we were colliding with the other craft. Simple, isn’t it?”

“But blessed effective,” declared Percy Simmons.

“That’s your ghost ship, Harry,” laughed Ralph.

“Don’t rub it in. I feel enough like a chump already,” groaned Harry.

“Well, anyhow, their little bit of deception has ended the chase for to-night,” said Ralph, after some more discussion. “Let’s get back to the _River Swallow_, boys, and then light out for home. We’ve spent a lot of time on this job. I was going to say ‘wasted,’ but I guess we’re destined to see more of that craft in the future, and it has done no harm to learn what cunning fellows are in charge of her. We’ll be harder to fool next time.”

“You bet we will,” came from both his companions, with a meaning emphasis.

“Now for the _River Swallow_,” said Ralph, as he took up the oars and prepared to row back to the craft.

“Where’s the light you told Malvin to put out?” asked Percy, in a puzzled voice, for the darkness shut them in all around and no light showed through it to guide them back.

“Why, I don’t see it. However, I know about where we left her,” responded Ralph.

But his knowledge was not as accurate as he surmised, for, after pulling about on the dark waters for more than an hour, and shouting at the top of their voices without eliciting any response, the lads were face to face with the fact that the chances of their finding the _River Swallow_ that night were very remote.

“It’s that rascal Malvin at his tricks again,” declared Ralph angrily. “When we get back home I’ll get my father to discharge him. He’s sore at us because we’ve got full charge of the boat, and he’s trying to take it out in every mean, petty way he can think of.”

“It looks very much like it,” agreed Percy Simmons, “but in the meantime we are adrift on the St. Lawrence with only a mighty hazy notion of where we are. What are we going to do?”

This question was to prove a poser for some period of time.