The Motor Rangers' Wireless Station. Goldfrap John Henry
before many minutes had passed.”
“Hum! That is certainly a fact,” assented Joe, as a big green sea rose ahead of them like a watery hillock and the Nomad drove her flaring bow into it. The water crashed down about them and thundered on the deck.
“There’s a sample copy,” sputtered Joe, dashing the water from his eyes and giving a grin; but, despite his attempt to make light of the matter, he grew very sober immediately afterward. Stout craft as the Nomad was, she was being called upon to face about as bad a specimen of weather as the Motor Rangers had ever encountered. What made matters worse, they had a badly – perhaps mortally – injured man on their hands. Delay in reaching harbor might result fatally. They all began to look worried.
Ding-dong dared to spend no more time on deck away from his engines. If anything happened to the motor, things would be serious indeed. He dived below and oiled the laboring motor most assiduously. Every now and then the propeller of the storm-tossed Nomad would lift out of the water, and then the engine raced till Ding-dong feared it would actually rack itself to pieces. But there was no help for it; they must keep on now at whatever cost.
For an hour or more the wind continued to blow a screaming gale, and then it suddenly increased in fury to such a degree that Nat and Joe, who were taking turns relieving each other at the wheel, could feel it pressing and tearing against them like some solid thing. Their voices were blown back down their throats when they tried to talk. Their garments were blown out stiff as boiler iron.
“How much longer can we stand this – ” Joe was beginning, shouting the words into Nat’s ears, when suddenly there was a jarring quiver throughout the fabric of the motor craft and the familiar vibration of the engines ceased. Simultaneously the Nomad was lifted on the back of a giant comber and hurled into a valley of green water, from which it seemed impossible that she could ever climb again. But valiantly she made the ascent in safety, only to go reeling and wallowing down the other side in a condition of terrifying helplessness.
“Get below and see what’s happened,” bawled Nat at Joe.
The other hastened off on his errand, clinging with might and main to whatever projection offered. He had just reached the engine room when he saw something that made him utter a cry of astonishment.
Slipping from behind a door which communicated with the cabin beyond was Dr. Sartorius. In his hand he had a monkey wrench. As for Ding-dong Bell, he was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER IV.
WHEN THE ENGINE FAILED
Joe Hartley’s mind, while not as active as Nat’s, worked quickly, and he sensed instantly a connection between the presence in the engine room of Sartorius and the stoppage of the motor. And this, although he could not imagine what possible purpose the man could have in such actions. Sartorius had tiptoed back into the cabin, where lay Mr. Jenkins, without casting a glance behind him. Joe crept forward with the same caution till he gained a point of vantage from which he could see into the lighted cabin.
Lounging back in a swivel chair with a magazine in his hand and a cigar in his mouth was the black-bearded doctor. On his face was a look of content and repose. Apparently he was utterly oblivious to the wild tossing of the Nomad in the rough sea, and had not Joe been certain that it was their more or less unwelcome guest whom he had seen sneak out of the engine room, he would have been inclined to doubt his own eyesight.
Ding-dong’s sudden reappearance chased these thoughts swiftly out of his mind.
“Where on earth have you been?” he demanded, staring open-mouthed at Ding-dong as if he had been a ghost.
“Wer-wer-what’s happened to the engines?” sputtered Ding-dong anxiously.
Joe drew him aside.
“I came down here the instant they stopped,” he said. “I caught our black-whiskered friend sneaking out of the engine room into the cabin with a monkey wrench in his hand. I’m sure he tampered with the engine.”
“Phew! That’s rer-er-right in line with what I went on deck to tell Nat about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just this. Happening to pe-pe-peek into the c-c-c-cabin a while back, I sus-sus-saw Wer-Wer-Whiskers kneeling in front of one of Jer-Jer-Jenkins’ trunks. He couldn’t get it open, and then I saw him tip-toe over to Jer-Jenkins and start to go through his pockets. I ber-ber-beat it up on deck to tell Nat.”
“Then you must have been going up the port companionway while I was coming down the starboard, and that’s how we missed running into each other.”
“Ther-ther-that’s about it.”
“What did Nat say?”
“To ger-ger-get the engines going and not mind anything else just now.”
“That’s right; we’re in a bad fix. I’ll stay down here and help you go over the motor. I can be of more use down here than up on deck.”
While the Nomad took sickening swings and plunges, at times rolling over on her beam ends, the two lads went over the motor painstakingly. It was no light task in that turmoil and fury of wind and wave. Every once in a while, when the little craft took an exceptionally bad plunge, they exchanged glances which plainly said:
“Are we going to get out of this alive?”
Once in a while Joe stole away to take a look at the doctor, whom he suspected of tampering with the motor. Each time he discovered no difference in the man’s strange repose. He might have been taking his ease on a Pullman drawing-room car instead of being on board a craft with which the elements were playing battledore and shuttlecock, for all the signs he showed of uneasiness. Joe did notice, though, that from time to time he cast glances from the magazine in which he appeared so much interested toward the lounge on which lay extended Mr. Jenkins’ senseless form.
It was on his return from one of these excursions that Joe was hailed by Ding-dong in an excited voice. Above the racket of the storm and the shouting of the voice of the wind there was not much danger of their being heard in the cabin.
“Lul-lul-look here, Joe; the pur-pur-precious rascal!”
The young engineer pointed to the carburetor of the two forward cylinders.
“What’s the matter with them?”
“The auk-auk-auk-auxiliary air valves have been tampered with, that’s what, and lul-lul-look on the stern cylinders; the spark plugs have been tightened on till the porcelain cracked. No wonder she went out of business.”
“Crackers! The fellow who did that was no greenhorn round an engine.”
“Well, I gug-guess not. Just watch me get busy. We’ll attend to his nu-nu-nibs later on.”
Joe got fresh spark plugs from the locker where the extra parts were kept, and, while Ding-dong fitted them, he started adjusting the carburetor which had been so skillfully tampered with. They were in the midst of this work when the tall form of Dr. Sartorius appeared in the doorway between the cabin and the engine room.
“What is the matter? What has happened?” he asked, as if noticing for the first time the stoppage of the engines.
“The motor stopped, that’s all,” spoke up Joe sarcastically.
“Dear me, in this storm that might have been serious,” said the doctor, holding on to the casement of the doorway to steady himself.
“I guess the fellow that did it didn’t know that we might all have gone to the bottom, or maybe he’d have thought a second time,” sputtered Joe, red-hot with indignation and not caring a snap if he showed it. He stared straight at the other as he spoke, and he could have sworn that under his steady, accusing gaze the doctor paled and averted his eyes.
“But you have it fixed now?” inquired the doctor after a second, ignoring Joe’s peppery remark.
“Oh, yes, we’ve got it fixed all right, and we’ll take precious good care it doesn’t get out of order again for any cause,” exploded