Then out of the fog, three hundred feet away, going at fifteen miles an hour, or more, glided swiftly the same long, narrow racing craft they had encountered the day before.
That strange craft crossed the “Rocket’s” bow, at least a hundred and fifty feet away.
“Racer ahoy!” bawled the youthful skipper, in his loudest voice.
But the swift craft vanished into the fog on the other side.
Was it fancy, or were all three of the young motor boat boys dreaming when they believed that back from that swift-moving racer came a sound of mocking laughter?
“Get into the engine room, Joe,” shouted Captain Tom. “Jed, up forward, on lookout!”
With that the young skipper swung around his speed control. The “Rocket,” obeying the impulse, leaped forward, then gradually settled down into a steady gait, while the young skipper strenuously threw his steering wheel over.
“What are you going to do, Halstead?” demanded Eben Moddridge, leaping to his feet as he caught the infection of this new excitement.
“Do?” uttered Captain Tom. “That’s the same craft that hung about us yesterday, plainly trying to nose into our secrets. The same craft that afterwards tried to play a trick on us to make us reach East Hampton late. And just now the fellows aboard the stranger laughed at us. What am I going to do? Why, sir, we’re going after her, going to overhaul her, if there’s the speed in the ‘Rocket.’ We’ll even try to board that stranger, Mr. Moddridge, and see whether Francis Delavan is aboard against his own will!”
NOT a single objection did the man of nerves offer. Ordinarily he might have jumped with fear at the proposal to go at fast speed through the fog. Though the mist was already lifting a good deal, as it had done on the day before, there was still enough of a curtain ahead to make it more than just risky to go rushing along.
In the white bank ahead the racing boat was already lost to sight. Captain Tom raised his hand to pull the cord of the auto whistle.
“If I show ’em where I am, though,” he thought, at once, “the man handling that other craft will know enough to swing off onto another course. He can leave me behind easily enough.”
The auto whistle, therefore, did not sound. Captain Tom understood fully the risk he was taking in “going it blind”—and fast, too—right on this pathway of Long Island navigation. But he made up his mind that he would very soon begin to sound his whistle, whether he sighted the other craft or not.