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CHAPTER XV.
UNDER THE EARTH

The boat’s pace decreased and then came another sharp command:

“Stop her!”

The light flashed on a sort of platform of rock ahead of them, a natural dock in this subterranean harbor. The white rays showed numerous bales and boxes piled all about and also a rough sort of table with tin cups and dishes on it, and in one corner, blackened with smoke, was a pile of rocks apparently dedicated to use as a cooking range.

“Well, of all the odd adventures,” thought Nat to himself as the motor craft was run alongside the rock shelf, “this is the queerest I’ve encountered, and all within striking distance of home, too, that’s the strangest part of it.”

But he was not given much time for reflection. Old Israel, in a gruff voice, bade him get out and climb up on the rock platform. There was nothing to do but to obey and Nat clambered up on the natural dock and was followed by the others. The searchlight was extinguished and the place was momentarily plunged into an abysmal darkness. But presently old Israel produced some matches and lit a large lamp that stood on the rude table.

“Better make yourself at home,” he gruffly advised Nat, “you may be here for quite a while.”

Nat gave a sigh of resignation. Had it not been for the anxiety he knew his friends must be feeling about him he could easily have found it in his heart to rather enjoy this weird adventure. As it was, though, he felt anxious and worried over what they must be thinking.

Seth and his brother set about preparing a meal consisting of fried fish, potatoes and coffee, with flapjacks. When it was ready they were all summoned to sit down and eat, and Nat took his place with the rest of them. He had the hearty appetite of energetic, healthy youth, which even his dilemma had not dulled.

During the meal old Israel and Minory sat apart conversing in wrangling tones. Nat judged that there was some hitch over the payment of the money that had been promised by the latter as the price of the Harleys’ aid. However, at length everything must have been patched up amiably, for the two shook hands as though cementing a bargain. Nat caught them looking at him once or twice, but deemed it wisest not to let them know that he was aware of this fact.

After the fish and the rest of the food had been disposed of, Nat was told that he could do what he liked. Having found an old newspaper, the boy sat down close to the lamp and began perusing it. But it was dull work and speedily palled, and he amused himself by exploring the cavern. The rock shelf extended back about twenty feet and was some forty feet across the front. It might, in fact, be compared to the stage of a theater as aptly as anything else, with the rock walls of the cave forming the proscenium arch.

Whether it was altogether natural in formation Nat could not, of course, say, but he recollected having heard that many such caves existed, and that in the days of the Spanish occupation they were used by the coast Indians as hiding places from their masters. In one or two places on the walls of the cavern he thought he saw traces of rough carvings which appeared to bear out this idea.

Another thing that he noticed, and one which set a bold plan buzzing in his head, was a small boat moored to the front of the rock platform not far from where the black motor boat had been tied. The boy was careful, however, not to let his eyes dwell too long upon this, as the desperate scheme he had half formed in his mind might have been killed in the making had his captors suspected that he had observed it.

Hour after hour went by; it seemed like an eternity to Nat, and at last he began to find himself getting sleepy. Finally he could fight off his drowsiness no longer, and, giving in to it completely, he flung himself on a pile of old sacking in a corner of the cave and immediately dropped off into profound slumber.

How long he slept he had no means of knowing, but when he awakened again the cave was empty, save for Seth, who sat at the table whiling away the time by hacking something out of a bit of wood with his knife. At last Seth began to blink and wink, and apparently in order to keep awake, he walked over to where Nat lay, seemingly still wrapped in slumber.

“Humph!” Nat heard him say to himself after a long inspection, “that younker’s good for twelve hours’ snoozing after that stuff pop gave him to make him sleep. I reckon there’s no harm if I take forty winks myself. Anyhow, there’s no chance of his getting away.”

So saying, he slouched back to the table, and burying his face in his hands, dropped off into what, to judge by his snores, must have been a sleep as deep as the one from which Nat had just awakened. Nat waited for a while to let Seth get well into the land of Nod and then, with his heart beating like a pneumatic riveter, he arose and crept cautiously toward the small boat he had observed earlier in the night.

For one moment the wild idea of taking the motor boat had flashed through his mind, but he abandoned the idea as it was pretty certain that either Seth or old Israel had pocketed the switch blade or otherwise made it impossible to start her without their knowledge. As he cautiously made his way to the edge of the platform and toward the small boat, Nat found himself wondering what had become of the others. The motor boat was still there, so that obviously they could not have used her in their departure.

“There must be some other way out of the cave,” thought Nat. “Don’t I wish I knew where it is? But with luck this way will prove just as well, provided Seth doesn’t take it into his head and wake up.”

Nat dropped into the small boat and cast her off without Seth’s stirring.

The tide must have been setting out, for the boat at once drifted away from the platform toward the mouth of the cavern. The boy had drifted some distance before he thought it safe to take to the oars. Right there and then he made a startling discovery. Small wonder the boat had been left unguarded. There were no oars in it!

“Great Scotland!” exclaimed Nat in a voice of consternation, “this is worse and then some! However, I’m in for it now and must make the best of it, but, in case Seth wakes and takes after me with the motor boat, I’m a goner, sure.”

Drifting along on the outsetting tide, the boat rapidly got beyond the glow diffused by the lamp beneath which Seth was sleeping, and glided with its helpless occupant into the pitchy darkness of the sea cavern.

CHAPTER XVI.
DRIFTING THROUGH THE NIGHT

“Talk about crossing the Styx! I’ll bet it had nothing on this business of bumping along blindly in an oarless boat in a dark cave,” thought Nat as, sitting in the bottom of the small craft and using the seat for a back rest, he reviewed the situation.

Every minute he dreaded to hear the roaring of the motor boat’s exhaust, which would tell him that he was being pursued. But nothing of the sort occurred, and before long he saw the stars shining at the mouth of the strange subterranean tunnel.

“Thank goodness, it’s a calm night, anyhow,” he thought, as he observed the placid, unclouded sky; “if it had come on to blow, or if a big sea was running, I’d stand a good chance of going to Davy Jones before my time.”

The tide ran stronger at the mouth of the cave and in a very few minutes Nat was out under the stars and drifting seaward, whither he had no idea. He tore out a grating from the bottom of the boat and tried to use it as a paddle, but he made no progress with this crude substitute for an oar and soon gave up the attempt in sheer weariness and disgust.

“I’ll have to let her drift at her own sweet will,” thought the boy, “and trust to luck to being picked up. Wow! but I feel sleepy and heavy. Must be the after effects of that stuff Seth said his amiable parent gave me to put me to sleep.”

The boy fought against his drowsiness for some time; but, try as he would, his eyes simply refused to stay open. The eyelids felt as if they had been weighted with lead, and ere long the lone passenger of the drifting boat was sleeping under the stars as peacefully as if in his cot at home or on the Wireless Island.

He was awakened by a rough jolt. For a few minutes he had not the least idea where he was, and when his senses did begin to flow back into his sleepy brain he was considerably mystified. The boat was bumping against a huge dark bulk which Nat, in the dimness, at first thought must be a cliff. He was scrambling to his feet a-tingle with astonishment, when a gruff voice hailed him from above:

“Ahoy, there! Who may you be?”

At the summit of the “cliff” appeared a head. The boy could see it blackly outlined against the star-sprinkled sky.

In his astonishment at being accosted Nat could think of nothing to reply but: “Nat Trevor of Santa Barbara. Who are you, and where am I?”

“I’m Captain Sim Braithwaite of the Pancake Shoals Lightship, and this is the Lightship. Now, if you’re tired of boating, you’d better come on board and explain yourself more explicitly.”

“The Pancake Shoals Lightship!” gasped Nat blankly. “Why, I’ve drifted much further than I thought possible.”

“Drifted!” echoed Captain Sim in a gruff voice. “For the love of Father Neptune, you don’t mean to say you’re skyhooting around the ocean without oars at one o’clock in the morning?”

“That’s just what I do,” responded Nat, with an inward chuckle at the captain’s evident amazement.

“Dear land of Beulah, you must be fond of salt water to take such cruises! A sort of sea-going lunatic, be you now?”

“I’ll come on board and explain. It’s a long story,” said Nat.

“All right; the accommodation ladder is just for’ard of where you are. Hitch yer boat up and come on board. Suffering tom-cats, I thought you was a whale or something at first! We don’t git many visitors out here, but you’re the rummest one I ever heard tell on.”

As he hitched his boat to the foot of the ladder and then began to climb up the Lightship’s high, steep sides, Nat could hear the captain mumbling and grumbling good-naturedly to himself.

“What’s the world coming to?” he was saying over and over. “Sea-going lun-atics a-wandering round the good Lord’s ocean in boats without oars, an’ bumping into lightships an – so here you are!” he broke off as Nat nimbly climbed on board. “Why, you’re nothing but a kid! If this ain’t the beatingest I ever heard tell of. Well, anyhow, welcome to the Lightship and then spin us yer yarn, fer I know you have one.”

“I certainly have,” laughed Nat, “and I’m no lunatic, either, as I hope to convince you. But you said this was a Lightship. I see the masts and the big light cages on top, but where are the lights?”

“Ah, that’s just it, my lad. I was near crazy with worriment when you come bumping along. Hen Coffin, he’s my partner out here, went ashore last night on leave. He’s a fine mechanic, Hen is, and if he’d been here the lights would have been going all right, but, Lord bless you, when something went wrong with the engine that drives the dynamos I was helpless as a babe unborn.”

“Maybe I can help you,” said Nat, sympathizing with the old man’s distress. “Does a gasolene engine furnish your power?”

“Yes, consarn the pesky thing’s hide. Thank goodness, there ain’t no steamers due up or down to-night; nothing but some coasters and steam schooners, and they know the coast well enough to smell their way out of trouble. But if some big steamer had come blundering along with a foreign skipper on the bridge, phew!” And the old man wiped his forehead on which the perspiration had broken out at the thought of the tragedy for which the failure of the light might have been responsible.

“How do you know that no foreign vessels or big steamers are due to-night?” asked Nat curiously.

“Why, by the wireless, of course. We gets reports from all up and down the coast. They’re relayed from one station to another, just as we notify all stations of the ships that pass here.”

Nat gave a joyful exclamation.

“What a bit of luck that I bumped into you!” he exclaimed jubilantly.

“It will be for me, if you can fix the engine,” said the captain, “but I don’t see any reason for you holding a service of thanksgiving.”

“I’ll explain about that later,” said Nat. “Now let’s go below, or wherever this engine is, and I’ll do my poor best to get it started up again for you.”

“Bully for you, my young rooster,” cried the bluff old captain, clapping the boy on the back. “Come this way. Right down the hatch here. Look out for the ladder, it’s steep.”

Descending a steep flight of stairs which the captain referred to as “a ladder,” Nat found himself in a cozy, well-lighted cabin, the illuminant being an oil lamp which had been lighted by the captain when the dynamo failed. There were book shelves, easy-chairs and plenty of minor comforts all about. Evidently the Lightship men made themselves as comfortable as possible in their lonely post.

Nat now saw that his host was a ruddy-faced, stout old seaman, weather-beaten and bluff. A peculiarity in his gait was now also explained, for Nat saw that one of his legs was a wooden one. But he had small time to dwell on these details, for the captain ushered him into a compartment opening off the “sitting room,” if it can be so called, which smelled of oil and machinery.

“Thar she is. Thar’s the ornary, all-fired, cussed critter that won’t turn a wheel fer old Cap’n Sim,” he said indignantly, holding aloft a lamp.

Nat looked the engine over. It was a stationary gasolene affair of about twenty horse power. Taking the lamp from the captain he examined it carefully.

“Why, so far as I can see, a loose nut on the sparker has caused your trouble,” he said, setting down the lamp, “but we’ll soon make sure.”

The boy took a wrench from the tool-rack and tightened up the loose part. Then, throwing the switch, he tested for a spark and found that it appeared to be all right. With a turn of the flywheel he started the engine, a welcome “pop” greeting his first effort. In a few seconds he had the engine whirring steadily away and the dynamo purring as it resumed work.

“Glory be!” shouted the skipper, dancing about on his good leg. “Boy, you’re a genius, that’s what you are. Now, let’s go on deck and start up the lights again. It’s a wonder my hair hasn’t turned gray from worriment, but everything’s all right now, thanks to you, my bucko.”

They soon gained the deck and the captain started to throw on the switch that connected the lights with the dynamo below. He was in the act of doing this, when not more than a few yards off he saw gleaming through the dark, like brilliant jewels, a red and a green light. They were the side lamps of a large steamer and she was coming straight for the Lightship!

“Quick!” shouted Nat, at the top of his voice. “Cap, look! Look, there!”

“Hallelujah!” exclaimed the captain, “if those lights won’t light, there’ll be a bad night’s work on Pancake Shoals!”

With hands that trembled he threw the switch, and the next instant the captain and Nat set up a simultaneous and joyous shout. From the twin mast-heads of the Lightship a brilliant glare shone out.

From the ship came shouts and hasty orders, and they saw her turn and swing off like some live thing that had been suddenly alarmed.

“Boy,” said the captain very solemnly, “it was Providence that sent you here to-night. You’ve done more’n help me. You’ve saved a valuable ship and maybe some human lives, for no craft that ever went ashore on the Pancake Shoals sailed the seas again.”

CHAPTER XVII.
ABOARD THE LIGHTSHIP

“Waal, I want to know!” exclaimed the captain.

Nat had just explained to him his eagerness about the wireless equipment of the Lightship. The explanation had followed Nat’s story of how he came to be adrift in the Harleys’ boat, which story had frequently been compelled to halt while the captain interjected such remarks as “Great whales and little fishes!” “Land o’ Goshen!” and “Shiverin’ top-sails!” When Nat had related the villainy of the Harleys and Minory, the old man had thumped the table savagely with his fist.

“I’d like to have had ’em in the foc’sle of my old ship, the Sarah Jane Braithwaite!” he had exploded. “I’d have shown ’em. Keel-hauling would have been too good for such a bunch of sojers.”

At the conclusion of his story, Nat had asked to be allowed to utilize the Lightship’s wireless in trying to raise his friends.

“Waal, I want to know!” was the skipper’s exclamation, already recorded above. “Anything you want on this ship is yours, young feller, even down to my wooden leg, although I wouldn’t wish that on yer. Come ahead, I’ll show you whar the contraption is. Lord! Lord! these are wonderful days, when lads who can use wireless and fix busted gas engines come drifting along, a-bumping into just the folks that needs ’em.”

The wireless room was on deck, enclosed in a small cabin at the foot of the forward mast of the Lightship. Nat saw that it contained a set of the latest and best instruments, and he soon was sending out broadcast an appeal to locate the Nomad. Following this, he tried on a chance to raise Goat Island. He had not much idea that there would be anybody there, but he thought it was worth an effort anyway.

To his amazement when he switched to the receiving apparatus and adjusted the telephones to his ears, out of space came a reply that almost made him fall off his chair. It was sent in a hesitating, unskillful way, very unlike Ding-dong’s expert key-handling, or even Joe’s.

“Who wants Goat Island?”

“I do, Nat Trevor!” he rejoined. “Who is this?”

“Nemo,” came back out of the ether.

“Nemo! Why, that’s the Latin for ‘nobody’” exclaimed Nat, in an amazed tone.

“Are you Goat Island?” flashed back Nat. “Answer at once!”

“This is Goat Island,” trickled into Nat’s ears in the same awkward, hesitating fashion; and then came silence. Try as he would, Nat couldn’t raise it again.

“Well, this is a wireless mystery for fair,” he muttered to himself, for the captain had left the wireless room to get some hot coffee and food; “that wasn’t Ding-dong and it wasn’t Joe; now who on earth was it? Some beginner, that’s plain, for he couldn’t send worth a cent. But then to cap the climax, telling me it’s ‘Nemo’! It must be spooks, that’s the only way I can account for it – wireless spooks.”

A minute later there came another message.

“Somebody trying to raise the Lightship,” exclaimed Nat, listening with all his might. “Maybe this is news of the Nomad.”

“Nomad put in at Santa Barbara last night,” was the message coming from the wireless man at the Santa Barbara station, which handled commercial messages. “Have found out that all on board are at Arlington Hotel. Shall I send message?”

“Yes. Tell them, please, that this is Nat Trevor, well and able. Am aboard the Lightship at Pancake Shoals. Tell them to come for me as soon as possible.”

Nat informed the man that the messages would be paid for at the land end and bade him good-night. With a light heart, troubled only by the mystery of the message from Goat Island, he joined the captain below and told him his good news.

“Waal, I’m glad you found your friends,” said Captain Sim, “but I’ll be sorry to lose you, my lad. You’re a boy after my own heart. I don’t know what I should have done without you.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Nat easily. “It just needed a little monkey-wrench sense, that’s all, and I happened to have given a lot of attention to that branch of science.”

The captain had prepared an appetizing meal, to which they both did ample justice.

“Now, lad,” said he, when it was completed, “you just turn in and take a good sleep and I’ll stand watch.”

As Nat was feeling drowsy again, doubtless owing to the far-reaching influence of Israel Harley’s opiate, he was nothing loath to accept this proposition, and turned in and was speedily in the land of dreams. When the captain awakened him he felt that the last traces of the drug had vanished, and his senses were as clear as a bell. The sun was high and the sea smooth and sparkling. Nat had some coffee and rolls and then joined the captain on deck. He gazed anxiously toward Santa Barbara, eager to catch the first glimpse of the Nomad.

Near by the Lightship several triangular fins were cruising about.

“Sharks!” cried Nat, and recalled with a shudder his terrible experience with these tigers of the sea when he was cast adrift in a sinking boat in mid-Pacific.

“So they be. Thar’s lots of them hereabouts,” said the captain, “but Lor’ bless yer, they’re only little fellows. Very different to the fellers that attacked me when the Sarah Jane Braithwaite was down among the Andaman Islands. Like to hear the yarn?”

“Why, yes,” said Nat, and added with a smile, “I’ve got a yarn of my own about them, too.”

“Waal,” began the skipper, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke as he withdrew his blackened old briar pipe from his mouth, “it was a good many years ago but I had a wooden pin even at that time, for d’ye see my port main brace was taken off when a spar fell on me during a typhoon in the Yaller Sea.

“But, to get to ther particlar day I’m talking of. We was becalmed among the Andamans. A dead flat calm with the pitch boiling in the seams, and there we lay under the broiling sun as ‘idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean’, as the poet says. My first mate proposed to me that we should take a swim. Now, although I’m minus one of my spars, I’m a right smart swimmer, and I agreed.

“We had a fine time sporting round thar in the cool water, but suddenly somebody on deck hollers, ‘Sharks!’

“Now that’s a hail you want to act quick on, and you take my alfired-davy on it that we made good time getting back to the ship’s side. But just as we reached it, what d’ye suppose?”

“A shark got you?” demanded Nat.

“No, he didn’t get me, but he got my wooden leg. Yes, sir, bit it right off where it was strapped on. Took it off whole and entire. Waal, they hoisted me on deck and the carpenter rigged up a jury spar for me and I made out all right, although not so comfortable as I was with my old one.

“The next day it was still flat calm, and I was leaning over the rail whistling for a wind, when what should I see but the most caterwampus disturbance in the water a short distance away. The thing that was making it, whatever it was, was coming toward the ship, and it didn’t take me long to make out that it was a shark.

“But I never saw a shark act like that before or since. First it would jump out of the water like a trout and then come sploshing down again with a thump that sent the spray scattering for yards in all directions. Then it would roll over and over and snort and plunge and wrastle about like all possessed.

“I calls my mate over and points it out to him, and by this time all the men was leaning over the bulwarks watching the critter. It came nearer and nearer and I thought I cotched it looking at me with a sort of reproachful look, if you can imagine a fish looking that way.

“‘Bill,’ says I to the mate, ‘get a shark line,’ we carried them in those latitudes, ‘bait it up with a bit of fat pork and we’ll find out what ails that critter.’

“‘Acts to me like it’s got a tummy ache,’ says Bill, as he goes below to get the tackle, ‘maybe it’s been a-eatin’ of green sea apples.’

“Waal, we chucks the line over, an’ afore long the shark bolts the pork whole and the hook gets embedded in his jaw and we haul him on board. Waal, sir,” and here the weather-beaten old seaman looked very hard at his young listener, “would you believe me when I tells you that what had been making that shark act so scandolus was my wooden leg?”

“Your wooden leg?” asked Nat seriously.

“Yes, sir, my wooden leg. You see, that shark was the same as bit off my port spar, and the blooming thing had wedged itself right across its gullet. It’s a wonder it hadn’t choked to death. It couldn’t swallow nothing and that was why it was cutting up such didos.”

“It couldn’t swallow anything, captain?” asked Nat solemnly.

“No, sir; not a solitary morsel,” rejoined the captain, wagging his head.

“Then how did it take the bait?” asked Nat, fairly bursting into laughter. But the captain never smiled.

“I reckon that was one of the inscrutable ways of Providence to help me get my leg back,” he said. “See here,” he held up the wooden leg for inspection, “see those marks? Those were made by shark’s teeth – yes, siree, it was sure a terrible experience.”

“Well,” chuckled Nat, “I don’t want to doubt your word, captain, but I guess that yarn is about what the Andaman shark found your leg, – hard to swallow!”

The captain looked as if he meant to defend his story, but Nat cut him short with a joyful cry:

“Here comes the Nomad! Hooray!”

And the Nomad it was, and a few minutes later there was a reunion of the Motor Rangers that made the old captain chuckle and stamp his shark-marked leg and yell:

“Bully for you, boys! You sure ought to be glad to see yer messmate again. He’s a boy to be proud of.”

Not long after, the Nomad with her crew of three, for Dr. Chalmers, Mr. Anderson and Nate, and Prof. Jenkins had been left ashore – the latter in a hospital, – headed for Santa Barbara. For some days thereafter, during which the professor rapidly regained health, they awaited anxiously for news of Minory, but none came.

A visit to the cave by the authorities, guided by Nat, resulted in their finding that “the birds had flown,” doubtless immediately after Nat’s escape was discovered. They also found a door in the floor which had been hidden by boxes when Nat was in the cave. This door led to a flight of steps, which in turn led to a passage, which, on being followed, was found to open in a rift in the cliffs. To any active person it would have been an easy matter to gain the top, and this doubtless was the way Minory escaped. But, although for the present all trace of both the Harleys and Minory appeared to be lost the boys were destined to hear from them again and that at no very distant time.