“Now, Joe, keep your eyes peeled,” ordered Nat. “I’d give a whole lot to run that fellow down and land him ourselves. If once he gets ashore, he’s slippery enough to get clear away.”
Dr. Chalmers, who had gone below with his patient, and also to make an examination of the professor’s trunks, came on the bridge at this moment with a dismal report.
As they had apprehended, Minory, before cutting the _Nomad_ loose, had ransacked the trunks. The model was gone, and the doctor feared that to inform the professor of the loss might cause a serious relapse in his condition.
It was agreed, therefore, to reply only vaguely to any questions he might ask. But fortunately the inventor, completely worn out by excitement and weakness, sank into a deep sleep almost as soon as he was laid on the divan below, and they were spared the necessity of evasive replies to the questions he would have been sure to ask about the safety of the model.
It must be confessed that when Nat learned the clever and thorough way in which Minory had carried out the last part of his desperate plan for stealing the fruits of the professor’s inventive faculty, his heart rather sank. Somehow, he did not feel quite so sanguine as he had at first that they would succeed, either themselves or through their wide-flung messages, in capturing the fellow. The remarkable ingenuity he had shown in his attempts on the wireless torpedo in New York, in his successful espionage of the inventor across the continent, and in his last coup of getting himself on board the craft on which the man he had injured was being conveyed ashore all showed an acute intellect, a depraved sort of genius for carrying out whatever nefarious ends its possessor had in view. Nat didn’t underrate his antagonist. He knew by this time that they had a wily and perhaps a desperate foe to fight.
The sea was as smooth as glass, and, although the sun beat hotly down, there was yet a refreshing breeze. These factors would aid Minory in his long row, supplementing the work of his muscles, which, despite his scrawny form, Nat judged to be wiry and powerful.
The _Nomad_ was crowded along to every ounce of her speed capacity. Ding-dong never left his engines a second, but watched them with anxious solicitude. He was fully aware of how much depended now upon the performance of the motor. So far it was running sweet and true, with a humming song that delighted the watchful boy engineer. Oil can in hand, he doused the bearings and moving parts with lubricant from time to time, feeling a shaft collar or an eccentric band to detect symptoms of overheating.