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CHAPTER VII.
ON “WIRELESS ISLAND.”

The rugged outlines of Goat Island loomed over the Nomad’s bow an hour or more after the conversation just recorded. But the pace of the stalwart craft was pitifully slow compared to her usual rapid mode of progression. The entire ship’s company, some of them recruited under such strange circumstances, were on deck, with the exception, of course, of Mr. Jenkins and Dr. Sartorius. The latter had elected to remain below, but you may be sure that he was closely watched.

It was growing rapidly dusk. Nat noted with increasing uneasiness the slow gait of the Nomad and the still considerable distance to be covered by her before she reached her haven.

“I’ll tell you,” he said to Joe, who stood beside him, “we’ll put a wireless plant on the Nomad, and then in future if we get stuck we can at least flash word of our plight and get aid from some source or other.”

“That’s a good idea,” agreed Joe; “if only we had such a plant on board now we could send out a message for the gasolene boat that supplies the fishing fleet and be all right in a jiffy.”

But, fortunately for the boys, their troubles for the day at least appeared now to be over. The Nomad made her cove without further difficulty, although, as Joe remarked, “there was hardly another turn left in her.”

The party landed in the dinghy which had been towed safely by its stout hawser. Mr. Jenkins, thanks to the care of Dr. Chalmers, showed signs of rallying, and not long after he had been comfortably bestowed on a cot in the Motor Rangers’ hut he regained consciousness. Although the boys were burning to ask questions which would aid in elucidating the puzzling problem into which they had blundered, they were warned by Dr. Chalmers not to do so at the time.

“Let us give him time to collect his thoughts and not pester him by talking now,” he said. “Since I have heard your stories, I am just as curious as you are to find out the truth of the matter, and just where this Dr. Sartorius fits into the puzzle; for I am sure that he is a factor, and no beneficent one, in the case.”

A little later Dr. Chalmers decided that it would not be necessary to remove the injured man to the mainland that night. In fact, he was inclined to think that such a course might prove harmful. They all, therefore, determined to remain on the island all night. The boys were perfectly willing to adopt this course. They were all dog tired by the strenuous day which they had passed through, as were, indeed, all of the party. Dr. Sartorius sat sullenly in one corner of the shanty all the evening, only speaking in monosyllables, but the boys did not trouble themselves about him. After a hearty supper, all hands turned in and slept the sleep of the exhausted till morning.

The first thing when he awoke Nat looked around for their queer guest. He was not in the shanty, and, leaving the others still asleep, Nat set out on a tour of investigation. Somehow he deeply mistrusted and suspected this black-bearded stranger, and when he found him missing he at once surmised that all was not well. He bitterly regretted that they had not openly voiced their suspicions the night before, or at least kept a watch on the man. But it was too late now.

Full of apprehension, but of what he did not know, Nat hastened to the cove. The boat in which they had come ashore was gone, and, worse still, the Nomad was missing from her moorings!

“The scoundrel!” cried Nat indignantly. “This is some of his work, I’ll bet a dollar. Oh, what wouldn’t I give to get my hands on him! But what are we going to do now? Here we are practically marooned on this island. Thank goodness we have the wireless; otherwise we’d be in a bad fix. Nobody comes near this place but fishermen, and they don’t put in frequent appearances.”

As he hurried back to the hut, burning with indignation, Nat formed a theory concerning the disappearance of the small boat and the larger craft. It was plain that Sartorius wished to get ashore without landing with the party. Nat believed, in the light of recent events, that the man had a notion that the boys meant to communicate their suspicions to the authorities. But how he had succeeded in running the Nomad alone and single-handed was a mystery which was not solved till later.

When he burst into the hut, full of the story of the vanishing of the two boats, Nat found Dr. Chalmers bandaging Mr. Jenkins’ head and placing fresh dressings upon it. The bandages had been extemporized from a stock of clean linen the boys had along with them. The group within the hut was listening eagerly to something that the injured man was saying; but Nat’s news, which he blurted out as soon as he entered, quite drew away attention from their wounded guest, whose hurt, it transpired, was nothing more than a bad scalp wound.

“Boys, the boats have gone!” was the way Nat announced his news.

The others stared at him only half understandingly.

“Gone!” echoed Joe, the first to find his voice.

“Gug-gug-gone!” sputtered Ding-dong.

“Do you mean they have been stolen?” demanded Dr. Chalmers.

“That’s just what I do mean, sir.” And Nat proceeded to impart all that had occurred, not forgetting, of course, the disappearance of Dr. Sartorius.

“Well, this is a nice kettle of fish,” blurted out Joe angrily. “Oh, but weren’t we the chumps to take that fellow on board! I wish we’d left him to continue his way to Mexico, and let it go at that!”

“Too late now to cry over spilt milk,” declared Nat. He was going to say more when Mr. Jenkins, who had been listening to their talk, interrupted.

“Did I hear you mention the name of Sartorius?” he inquired in a feeble voice, although one that vibrated with a keen interest.

“Yes,” said Nat, and rapidly told how they came to include the name of the black-bearded man in their conversation.

“And he was here and is gone?” demanded Mr. Jenkins so excitedly that Dr. Chalmers had to beg him to calm himself.

The others stared at Mr. Jenkins. His hands clenched and unclenched.

“Oh, the precious scoundrel!” he choked out; and then added quickly, “Look in my coat and see if you can find some papers, a thick bundle held together with an india rubber band!”

Then, and not till then, did the Motor Rangers recall what the ship’s doctor had told them about a slashed coat. In the rush of events following the start of the return run, this fact had completely slipped their minds. A glance at the coat showed a slash over the breast pocket. Inside there were no such papers as the injured man described. The pocket was empty, in fact.

Mr. Jenkins groaned when he heard this.

“Oh, why didn’t I recover consciousness sooner?” he exclaimed, lying back weakly. “That rascal has taken the result of years of work and thought with him. I am ruined!”

Dr. Chalmers happened to have with him, in a sort of pocket emergency case, some soothing tablets. He crushed one of these in a tin cup of water and gave it to Mr. Jenkins. In a few seconds he spoke to him in a quiet tone:

“Suppose you tell us what you know about this man Sartorius, and how you came to be on the same ship, and also how you met with your accident – if it was an accident.”

“It was not an accident,” rejoined Mr. Jenkins emphatically, “the man Sartorius – who is not a doctor, but only styles himself such – came behind me on the companionway and shoved me so suddenly that I lost my balance and fell headlong. I turned in time to see him, but not to save myself. I had been on guard against attack, but not against such an attack as that. Then, having rendered me unconscious by the fall, he robbed me of the papers I have mentioned, for which he had tracked me across the continent.”

“Did you know that he was on board the Iroquois?” asked Nat, while the others formed an interested circle.

“Not till the ship had sailed. Then I encountered him suddenly in a passageway. From that moment I was on my guard, but, as you know, I did not succeed in warding off the attack I apprehended. In fact, I never dreamed that it would come in that way.”

“What were these papers he was so anxious to get hold of?” asked the doctor; and then, as the other hesitated, “You may speak with confidence. I am sure that no one here will disclose anything confidential you may tell us.”

Mr. Jenkins scanned all their faces eagerly. It seemed as if he wanted to satisfy himself that what the doctor had said was right, that he could rely on them to retain his secret.

“Gentlemen,” he said in low tones, “those papers were the plans of an invention which I had just brought to perfection after years of labor and research. You have heard, of course, of the reward offered by the Government to the man who could perfect a dirigible torpedo? That is to say, a torpedo that would be under the control of the operator who sent it on its death mission, from the moment it left the side of the ship that launched it to the instant that it exploded.”

The boys nodded. They all read several scientific papers and magazines and had, of course, heard of the reward that Mr. Jenkins mentioned.

“Well, I had invented and perfected such a projectile,” continued Mr. Jenkins, his eyes glowing like two coals in his pale cheeks as he talked.

“What, you had invented a torpedo which could be governed from a ship’s side and absolutely controlled by the operator?” Nat could not help asking. The thing seemed fantastic, improbable; he even thought that possibly the man’s mind might be wandering. But before Mr. Jenkins could reply, Dr. Chalmers struck in with an exclamation.

“Pardon me, but you are not the Professor Jonas Jenkins, late instructor of physics and chemistry at Columbia University, New York City, who withdrew from the faculty to perfect some experimental work, the nature of which was kept a profound secret?”

“I am,” was the quiet reply, “and that experimental work was identical with the plans and papers of which I have just been robbed.”

“Namely, a dirigible torpedo wholly under control at all times?”

“Yes, sir. My torpedo was governed by a principle entirely novel in such lines. Torpedoes have been experimented with which have been governed by wires, at best a clumsy and inefficient device. My torpedo was controlled by a new principle entirely – namely, by wireless!”

“Ber-ber-ber-by wer-wer-wer-wireless!” sputtered Ding-dong eagerly.

“Just so. You understand wireless?” inquired Professor Jenkins.

“A lul-lul-little bub-bub-bit,” stammered Ding-dong.

“We’ve got a plant here, which Ding-dong – William Bell, I mean – erected,” struck in Nat.

“A wireless here on this island?”

The question came from the injured man in anxious, almost quavering tones.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then we’ve a chance to head off that rascal yet!”

Mr. Jenkins raised himself on his cot.

“Can’t you send out a message to all coast stations to alarm the authorities to be on the lookout for the man when he lands? He can hardly escape notice in that boat.”

“Jumping ginger snaps! The very thing!” cried Nat. “What a fine lot of dummies we were not to think of that before; but I guess losing the boats turned us all topsy-turvy. Get busy, Ding-dong!”

But Ding-dong was already at his instruments. He flashed on his sending current and presently the whine and crackle of the urgent message “To All Stations” was audible even in the living hut through the open door of the wireless shed.

CHAPTER VIII.
AN AERIAL APPEAL

While Ding-dong was sending his wireless appeal flashing and crackling into the ether, Dr. Chalmers turned to Professor Jenkins again.

“You have not yet told us what connection this man Sartorius has with the case?” he hinted.

“Sartorius is no more his name than it is mine,” was the rejoinder. “His right name is Miles Minory, and he was dismissed from the University shortly before I left for being engaged in some shady financial transactions. He had worked as my assistant once, and in some way learned of my secret researches. Of a singularly acute mind, he perceived at once the financial possibilities of the device. After approaching some capitalists, he came to me with a proposition to sell out, he, of course, to get a large reward from the capitalists for persuading me to do so. I refused, and told him that I would market my wireless torpedo, when completed, in my own way. Not long after, my rooms were broken into in my absence and my papers tampered with; but, luckily, long before this I had removed the important ones to a place of safety, knowing Minory’s character and that he was likely to adopt crooked methods when others failed to gain his end.

“From time to time I became unpleasantly aware that I was being watched. The secret surveillance got on my nerves, but I persisted with my work until I perfected it. I carried out my last experiments in a remote coast town on the north shore of Long Island. One night I was attacked on my way from my experiment station to my home. Minory did not appear in this outrage, but I knew he instigated it. As in his other efforts to obtain my papers, he failed in this also.

“But it decided me that the vicinity of New York was too dangerous a place for me to carry on my work. I was not sure even that my life was safe if I persisted in holding out against the ring that wanted to seize my invention. In this dilemma I turned to a friend who owns a small ranch in Mexico, not far from Mazatlan. He offered me freely the use of this secluded spot for as long a time as I wished to use it, and I jumped at the offer. Without loss of time I booked passage for San Francisco through a third party, in order to throw my enemies off my trail. When I embarked on the Iroquois it was with a light heart, but, as I told you, I was not long left undisturbed in my fancied security. Although that beard Minory wears is as false as the name he traveled under, I knew him even in the disguise he had adopted. I was on guard, but – well, the rest you know.”

During the recital of this remarkable story they had listened without a word of interruption. Now, however, everyone had questions to ask, all of which Mr. Jenkins readily answered. We shall not detail the conversation here, as Professor Jenkins’ narrative as already set down appears fully to cover it. In the midst of the talk, and while Joe was fixing up the best breakfast he could on the hut stove, Ding-dong, his face red with excitement, came running in.

“I’ve sent out a full description of the m-m-man and the two b-b-boats to all coast stations within reach,” he exclaimed. “But tell me one thing, professor, could this Sus-ar-Sartorius run a mum-mum-motor boat?”

“I don’t know,” was the rejoinder, “but one thing I can tell you, he is a slick enough customer to be able to do almost anything.”

“From the way he fixed that carburetor and those plugs it certainly appears that way,” commented Joe, looking up from the frying pan; “why do you suppose he wanted to delay the Nomad, anyhow?”

“To mum-mum-make a further sus-sus-search through the Professor’s trunks, I guess,” was Ding-dong’s reply.

“What! He was looking in my trunks?” cried Mr. Jenkins.

“Yes, sir; Ding-dong caught him at it,” put in Joe.

“The cunning scoundrel! He is cleverer than even I thought,” cried the professor. “In one of my trunks was a working model of the wireless torpedo. If he secured that it would be of invaluable aid to whoever had the plans. In fact, without it as a key they would have some difficulty in following out my calculations and designs.”

“So that was the reason he was so anxious to come ashore with us!” cried Nat, a light breaking in on him; for it would have appeared more reasonable to suppose that, having rifled the professor of his papers, the thief would desire to keep on the high seas. “I see it all now. He knew that your trunks would be shipped ashore with you, Professor, and in some way he also knew that they held what he hadn’t yet obtained, the working model. He must have calculated that on the way between the Iroquois and the shore he would have time to ransack your baggage and get hold of it.”

“And his desire to lay hands on it gave him nerve enough to tamper with the engine and endanger his own life as well as ours in that gale,” supplemented Joe.

“It is all as clear as day now,” cried Nat; and then in a chagrined voice he muttered, “What a pack of boneheads we’ve been! Just think, we had him right in our power and he’s slipped through our fingers like so much water!”

“Never mind,” consoled Dr. Chalmers, “you couldn’t very well have acted on what knowledge you had up to the time that Professor Jenkins recovered consciousness. I think, in fact, that – Hark!”

It was Ding-dong’s “wireless alarm” clanging out the call for Goat Island.

“On the jump! Run like a jack-rabbit now, Ding!” cried Nat excitedly. “This may be news of the rascal!”

But it was not; however, it was news of a still more astonishing nature, and, so far as the boys were concerned, almost as gratifying, dearly as they would have loved to catch Sartorius – or Minory, as we must now call him. Nat and Joe, who had followed Ding-dong to the wireless shed, bent over him while he answered the call and then switched to his receiving instruments.

“It’s the fishing steamer, Hattie and Jane,” he explained hastily. “You know, Capt. Eli Thompson’s boat, the one that collects fish from the fleet. She carries wireless so that she can get quotations and instructions from her owners even at sea.”

He broke off, and as the dots and dashes began to beat into his ears from the Hattie and Jane, he wrote swiftly with nervous, flying fingers.

As they bent over him with open mouths and wide eyes, Nat and Joe burst into a joyous “whoop!” of delight as they read the message Joe’s pencil transcribed on the pad.

“Your motor boat, Nomad, found drifting. No one on board. Are you all right? – Thompson, S. S. Hattie and Jane.”

“Gee! I’ll bet the captain thought we were all murdered or something!” cried Joe, gripping Nat’s shoulder, while Ding-dong sent back a reassuring message.

“Hush!” cried Nat. “Here’s more coming.”

“Hawser has been cut. How can you explain?”

“The hawser cut?” shouted Nat. “Cracky! I see it all now. That fellow couldn’t run the Nomad himself and means to row ashore. He figured, though, that we might swim out to her and start in pursuit, so he cut the mooring rope and set her adrift.”

“Oh, for five minutes alone with him!” panted Joe.

“What’ll I say?” asked Ding-dong, half turning.

“Say that we will explain when we see him. Ask him if he will bring the Nomad to Goat Island. Tell him we are marooned here and will pay him well for the job.”

Ding-dong obediently rapped out the message and then switched to the receiving set again. They saw him give a reassuring nod as he wrote down on his pad:

“Will be at Goat Island within three hours. Catch light, and can spare the time. Is fifty dollars too much?”

“The old rascal!” grinned Nat, too delighted to be angry at this somewhat steep figure. “He knows he’s got us under his thumb and sees a chance to make a good wad of salvage. Tell him ‘all right,’ Ding-dong, there’s nothing else for it.”

“Satisfactory. Make all haste you can,” was flashed back, and then came “Good-byes.”

As soon as Ding-dong had grounded his instruments and taken off his head receivers there was a scene of wild jubilation in the wireless hut. The boys whooped and cheered like Indians and joined in a wild war dance.

“Whoopee!” yelled Joe, “there may be a chance of catching that old fake-whiskered cuss, after all. He’s got a good long start, but what with our wireless warnings and with the long row ahead of him, we have a fighting chance of overhauling him.”

“And I reckon he won’t be in a desperate hurry, because he’ll never figure that we could have such blind luck as to have the Nomad picked up by about the only wireless craft along the coast that knew her and her owners and could notify them at once of the recovery,” cried Nat. “Boys, it’s one chance in a thousand, but it looks as if luck was beginning to run our way again after all our set-backs.”

Within a very few minutes those at the living hut were apprised of the state of affairs. The effect on every one’s spirits was wonderful. Even Dr. Chalmers and his friend became infected with the excitement of the chase after a man who had proved himself as consummate a rascal as could be found on earth.

But in the midst of the jubilation, Joe propounded a sudden question that came like a dash of cold water on their hopes.

“Suppose before he cut the Nomad adrift he rifled the trunks and got the model?” he exclaimed.

It was a possibility that, strange to say, in the general excitement, had not yet occurred to any one of them.

“In that case, if we don’t find him I am in as bad a fix as ever,” declared the professor blankly. “With the model it wouldn’t take a clever fellow like Minory more than a few days to understand the principles of my invention, rush patent papers to Washington and reap his reward from the unscrupulous capitalists employing him. You see I was so afraid of possible leaks that I was waiting till I had every detail complete before I filed application for a patent. With nobody in my confidence concerning my work, I have absolutely no proof nor witnesses that the wireless torpedo is the product of my brain. Minory, on the other hand, has the backing of almost unlimited money and influence.”

“Humph!” grunted Nat, in a low aside to Joe, “we may be euchered after all, then.”

“We!” rejoined Joe in a rather astonished tone.

“Yes,” was the sturdy reply. “I like this professor and I hate to see such a rascal as Minory getting away with a thing to which a man has devoted the best efforts of his life. We, Joe – I said we– are going to help him in every way in our power.”

“Bully for you, Nat. I’m with you to a crisp!” cried Joe, while he gave Nat a slap on the back that almost drove the breath out of the young leader’s body.