CHAPTER XIX

THE MOTOR THAT WOULDN’T “MOTE”

IT was Eben Moddridge who, marine glass in hand, now devoted the most attention to the schooner, which was once more in full chase.

Francis Delavan was now doing so well that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind of his full recovery.

“How—how’s the stock market?” he ventured at last to ask.

“Don’t know, sir,” retorted Butts. “Neither does anyone else. We’ve got you and the engine to fix. When you’re both going fine, then we’ll try to find more time to talk.”

Mr. Delavan smiled, good-humoredly, but next inquired:

“How do you happen—to be aboard the ‘Rocket!’”

“Walked aboard,” admitted Hank. “Had to sir. Nobody ever took the trouble to shanghai me.”

Joe, in the meantime, made two or three frantic efforts to make the motor “mote,” though without success.

“It’s all on account of this valve,” Dawson explained to his chum, pointing. “I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but the last time I inspected it, it looked all right.”

“You’ve another valve in the repair chest that will fit,” replied Tom. “And, in goodness’ name, hurry up. I’ll help you.”

“One more try at this old valve, for a few miles anyway,” cried Dawson, desperately. “Tom, the new valve is just a shade too large at the screw-thread end. It’ll take a few desperate minutes to make it fit.”

By the time he had finished speaking the young engineer was industriously engaged in forcing in packing around the worn old valve.

“Hank,” Captain Tom roared from the companionway, “shake out that solitary sail and hoist it. Get all the speed you can out of it.”

No one had thought of the sail up to this moment. It wasn’t much of a sail. Rigged to the single signal mast of the “Rocket,” the sail was intended only to enable the boat to reach port if ever the engine should give out.

Butts, with an exclamation of disgust at not having thought of the canvas before, ran forward. Almost before he stopped running, his fingers were at work on the knots that held the canvas furled. In surprisingly quick time this Long Island boy had the sail hoisted, set, and was back at the wheel.

Eben Moddridge, without waiting to be called, had taken his place as attendant by the side of his friend’s chair.

What Hank Butts didn’t know about motors he made up by his knowledge of sailing craft He handled the “Rocket” now as though she were a catboat, watching the fill of her canvas and making the most out of the steady light breeze that was blowing.

As he steered, Hank looked back often at the schooner. That craft, with all canvas hung out, was coming along at something like seven knots. The “Rocket” was making barely four under her small spread.

The answer? Hank Butts knew it well enough, and groaned as he watched his own tiny sail.

Down below Joe Dawson, the perspiration standing out in great, cold drops, was working against time. After another trial he had abandoned the idea of making the old valve work even for a few miles. He had opened the repair chest and had taken out the substitute valve that had to be fitted over. The young engineer was now bending over the repair bench, rapidly turning the shank of a thread-cutter. Captain Tom stood by, anxious, useless for the present, yet ready to lend an instant pair of hands as soon as he could help.

“Thread still a bit too large,” reported Dawson, after the second attempt to make it fit.

Back to the work-bench he sprang, while Halstead bounded up into the open so that he could take a brief look astern.

Behind them trailed the schooner, now a bare third of a mile astern, and gaining visibly.

“I’m not going to say a word to hurry you, Joe,” he remarked, dropping below again. “I know you’re working to save even seconds.”

“Ain’t I just, though!” gritted Dawson, as he turned.

“Eb,” demanded Delavan, of his friend, “you’ve simply got to tell me how the stock market is going.”

“I—I—er—haven’t had the least idea for more than forty hours,” replied Mr. Moddridge, embarrassed.

“Hey, there,” called Hank, officiously, from the wheel, “just at the present moment I’m skipper here, and boss. My orders are that no Wall Street slang be talked on board until after the steward has found a chance to serve something to eat. Mr. Delavan, be glad, sir, that you are able to get some of your breath.”

“Are the rascals gaining on us?” was the owner’s next question, as he endeavored to turn himself around in the chair for a look astern.

“Not much,” replied Mr. Moddridge. “Besides, in a moment or two more the boat’s engine will be doing its duty again. The engineer has his repair work almost finished.”

Francis Delavan smiled good-humoredly, though he did not by any means believe this reassuring information.

The schooner was less than an eighth of a mile away when Joe Dawson made one more effort to adjust the substitute valve.

“I think it’s going to fit,” he murmured, a world of hope in his voice, though he squinted vigilantly, watchfully, as he continued the twisting. “By Jove, Tom, I believe it’s O. K. It seems fast and tight. I’ll let a little oil in; give the wheel a few turns.”

A few breathless seconds passed. Then the pistons began to move up and down, slowly, all but noiselessly. Seized with a kind of fearful fascination, both motor boat boys watched the engine, almost afraid to breathe lest the driving cease.

Then Captain Halstead, still looking backward, while Joe’s chest heaved at last, yanked himself up into the hatchway, glancing out over the water.

The schooner was now almost upon the “Rocket,” though hauling off a bit to windward as though intending to make a sudden swoop and bear down crushingly against the motor boat.

“Safe?” Halstead almost whispered down into the engine room.

“Try it, awfully easy,” replied Joe.

“Hank, give the speed-ahead control just a bare turn,” called Halstead. “Easy, now!”

The propeller shaft began to revolve. At that same instant the schooner came around on a starboard tack, so steered as to intercept the shorter craft.

Captain Tom himself sprang to the speed control, letting out just a notch more, praying under his breath that the motor might stand by them in this moment of greatest crisis.

At them, heeling well over, her crew at the rail ready to board the “Rocket,” came the schooner. Her first manœuvre had been to board by the bows. Now it looked as though the sailing vessel must strike amidships. Halstead gave a quick turn to the speed-ahead control. Answering, the motor boat took a jump ahead, then settled down to steady going. The schooner, left astern, jibed with a noisy flapping of sails.

“I think we can make it,” called up Dawson.

“We _have_ made it,” called back Captain Halstead, joy ringing in his voice. “The only question is whether we can keep it up.”

“Let her out a bit more,” called Joe.

One hand on the wheel, the other on the speed control, the young skipper increased the speed by slow degrees until the “Rocket” had settled down to a steady twelve-mile speed.

Hank, relieved of the helm, ran aft. Standing on the stern rail, one arm wrapped around the flag-pole, young Butts made a lot of gestures at the crew of the schooner. Those gestures were eloquent of derision and contempt.

Five minutes later the schooner had given up the chase, heading off to the southward.

“Ev—everything is all safe now, isn’t it?” asked Eben Moddridge, shakily.

“Trouble seems to be all behind us,” replied Halstead.

“Then—er—I’m—I’m going below and lie down,” quaked Mr. Moddridge. “I never felt more nervous in my life!”

“Go below and enjoy yourself, sir,” laughed Tom, without malice, but without thinking. “You’ve done yourself proud, Mr. Moddridge, and you’re entitled to the best attack of nerves you can find.”

Hank sprang quickly to aid Mr. Moddridge, for the latter was really shaking and tottering as he started aft.

“Still no one seems able to tell me about the thing I want most of all to know about—the condition of the market, and of securities in particular,” complained Francis Delavan, in a much stronger voice.

“No one knows well enough how to tell you,” laughed Skipper Tom, “except Mr. Moddridge. If you only knew, sir, what a trump he’s been lately, you wouldn’t begrudge him one first-class nervous fit now.”

Mr. Delavan laughed, though he added, with a comical sigh:

“I don’t see but I shall have to wait.”

“Something to eat, did you say, sir?” asked Hank, suddenly appearing at the owner’s elbow. “Yes, sir; as fast as possible for all hands. Why, we’ve been so rattled this morning we didn’t even think about food. And now my stomach is reading the riot act to my teeth. O-o-oh!”

Hands clutched over his abdomen, Hank made a swift disappearance into the galley. There was an abundance of food in the “Rocket’s” larder that could be prepared hastily. But as Mr. Moddridge was “enjoying” himself in his own especial way, and Mr. Delavan was still feeling the effects of the chloroform too much to have any appetite, the crew fell in for the first chance at table.

When that food had been disposed of, Joe cautiously worked the engine on until the boat was making twenty miles an hour. The new valve proved fully equal to the strain put upon it.

Mr. Moddridge remained below more than two hours. When he came on deck again he appeared to be in shape to tell Mr. Delavan the latest news he had of the state of their affairs.

The owner listened with a face that became graver every moment.

“It looks black for us, Eben, and we may be wiped out by this time, or, anyway, by the time we can get back to the battle-field. But it was grand of you, Eb, to throw in the last dollars of your private fortune to save us both. Whatever happens, I won’t forget your act. But, good heavens, how we must hustle and move now! Captain Halstead, just where are you heading?”

“As straight as the crow flies, sir, for New York harbor. But I can change the course if there’s any other point you’d rather make.”

“No; keep straight on, captain. New York is our battle-field. And, by all that’s sure, we’ll win out yet if there’s a fighting spar left standing when we hit Wall Street!”

With a vigorous bound this fighting Wall Street man was on his feet again, pacing the deck, not a glimpse of fear in his strong face.

Then, a little later, he and Moddridge found their appetites, and Hank Butts served them enthusiastically.

As the afternoon passed, and all hands gathered near the wheel, the stories of all were told.

Mr. Delavan, for his part, explained that, on that morning when he had taken the “Rocket’s” port boat and had gone out for a row, he had gone past the inlet. While out beyond, he had been overtaken by the nameless racing launch. A hail from the deck of the other craft had followed, and then an invitation to take a look aboard. Thinking that he might possibly penetrate the mystery as to who was really running that craft, Mr. Delavan had rowed alongside, intending only to stand up in his own little boat and look aboard the launch.

But, while doing so, he had been seized by both the boat handlers and dragged aboard. There he became mixed in a fight with two others who, from their descriptions, must have been Rexford and Ellis. When the fight stopped Francis Delavan was under the hood, his hands tied behind him. He remembered that, later on, the small port boat had been overturned and set adrift, and that his own hat and coat had been taken from him and cast into the water.

“Later, that forenoon,” continued Mr. Delavan, “I saw my own ‘Rocket’ following us. By stealth I had succeeded in freeing my hands. Now, I made a dash for freedom, intending to leap overboard and try to swim to you. But I was caught and held, just at the edge of the hood. I found chance only to snatch my wallet from an inner vest pocket and hurl it out into the water. I was in hopes you’d see it, pick it up, and understand.”

“We did,” nodded Mr. Moddridge.

Mr. Delavan went on to explain how, after the throwing of the wallet, he had been more carefully bound, hand and foot, and gagged. When taken ashore at Cookson’s Inlet he had also been blindfolded, his removal from the boat not taking place until a carriage had been brought.

Then the story of the final chase was told, even how Hank Butts had done so much to carry the day aboard the schooner by his artless trick of dropping the hitching weight where it would do the most harm to the enemy.

“Say, Hank,” put in Joe Dawson, who had taken little part in the talk, “wherever did you learn the easy way that you drop that weight?”

“A feller from New York taught us that last summer,” Butts replied. “Some of us fellows over in East Hampton practiced it until we couldn’t miss.”

“But how did you learn to land it on another fellow’s foot so easily that it looks almost like an accident?”

“I’ve been telling you,” Hank insisted. “We kept on dropping weights on each other’s toes until we got the trick down fine.”

“What?” ejaculated Dawson, opening his eyes wider. “You practised by dropping iron weights on each other’s feet? You fellows must be wonders, if you could stand that!”

“Oh, no,” Hank confessed. “We practised with small sandbags.”