CHAPTER XVII.
THE "ISLAND QUEEN'S" SECRET.
Well, I will leave you to imagine for yourselves just how the boys looked and felt and acted at this amazing discovery.
They were baffled, mystified, and, to tell the truth, not a little alarmed.
A human enemy they would not have feared. But in the darkness, with the moisture from the fog dripping in a melancholy fashion on the deck, the near presence of the supernatural—for such was the only conclusion left—was, to say the least, disquieting.
While they still stood there, gazing at each other through the fog, with blank astonishment depicted on their faces, their nerves were put to a still further test.
The same sharp scream which had echoed from the uncanny vessel as she drifted by the "Nomad," of which they had since spoken with what effect we know, sounded once more.
This time it seemed to proceed from above them.
From some point high up in the mist-laden air.
Shrill and terrible it rang out. Their blood was fairly chilled with horror.
What could it mean?
Nat was far too sensible a lad to believe in ghosts. So, too, was Joe. As for Captain Akers, he was superior to most seamen in the matter of superstition, but he gave it now as his unalterable conviction that the "Island Queen" was haunted.
This was by no means a comfortable idea. After some further search—although they surmised beforehand it would be fruitless—the adventurers made their way back to the cabin, sadly puzzled and not a little confused.
After that one long scream from the upper regions dead silence had fallen. It was disturbed only by the doleful drip-drip of the fog moisture from the rigging.
"Well, boys," said the captain, as they reentered the cabin, "I, for one, ain't sorry to be back where there's light and comfort. This thing is becoming too much for me and I'm willing to own that I'm beat by it. Any one got any suggestions?"
Nobody had. Soon after they turned in, as, despite their uneasiness, all were tired out by the exciting events of the day. Nat volunteered to take the first watch, it being arranged that at midnight he was to awaken Captain Akers, who would relieve him.
The lad took up his station by the door where the steady breathing of the others soon apprised him that they had passed into slumberland. It was an eerie sensation sitting there, looking out on the fog-laden night and speculating—for, try as he would, Nat could not help doing so—on the nature of the invader who had so sadly disturbed them.
He had his rifle in his hands and determined to keep bright and wide awake, so that if anything occurred which might have a bearing on the mystery he would be able to solve it. Just how long he had sat there before something happened to break the monotony Nat did not know. It might have been an hour or it might have been two. But he had noticed that the fog was beginning to lift when at the same instant he perceived a shadowy form come creeping along the decks, making toward the stern.
The figure was bent almost double and swung two long arms as it advanced. After his first gasp of surprise, Nat noted that the newcomer was unarmed. This thought gave him new courage and, slipping within the shadow of the door, he watched the figure's advance.
But, whatever its mission, it did not apparently mean harm to the occupants of the cabin, for, after a brief pause near there, it kept right on to the stern.
As it passed Nat slipped out of his place of concealment and took after it, treading softly the while, so as not to alarm the marauder. He was curious to see what the fellow was up to. When he did make out Nat was seized with a sudden fury and sprang forward.
The figure, after advancing right up to the stern-rail, could be seen, in the now clearing atmosphere, to be fumbling with something.
"Great Ginger! He's casting our boat loose!" gasped Nat.
As he made this discovery the boy was too engrossed to notice that a puff of wind came over the water. In their activity, since they had been on board, not one of them had thought to lower the schooner's sails. She heeled to the wind which momentarily grew steadier and forged gently ahead. But of all this Nat—to his cost, as we shall see later—was oblivious.
The discovery he had made of the nefarious work the mysterious inhabitant of the schooner was about had aroused his rage.
With an angry shout, he sprang forward, rifle in hand, toward the midnight skulker.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, with an angry inflection in his voice.
Then, as the figure switched around, he added, leveling his rifle:
"Throw up your hands and don't dare to move. I've caught you at last."
But, to his surprise, instead of remaining still, the figure made a swift dash for him. Before he could make a move Nat, caught quite off his guard, for he had not dreamed of opposition, found the rifle whisked from his hands by a herculean grasp and hurled overside.
The next instant those mighty arms had encircled Nat himself.
The lad, despite his strength and activity, was a child in that grip of steel.
He felt himself helplessly snatched from his feet and the breath crushed out of his body.
This stifled his agonized cry for help.
In one dreadful flash of insight he saw that the creature which now held him was hairy, unclothed, and ferocious to a degree. But while he still perceived this subconsciously, struggling vainly to free himself, his captor made a rush for the rail of the schooner.
The next instant Nat felt himself hurtling through the air, uttering a choked cry.
But his shout was drowned as the water closed above his head. His last recollection, as he sank, was of a shrill and terrible cry mingling with and overpowering his own appeal. It was the same cry that they had heard twice before, and, for a third time, in the air above them.
Nat, who was a strong and self-possessed swimmer, came to the surface almost at once after his submersion and at once looked about for the schooner. But, to his horror, he now saw what he had not observed before, and that was that the vessel was moving quite smartly through the water.
"Help! Help! Help!" shouted Nat, treading water.
But his cry was unheard.
In a perfect agony of fear and apprehension as to his future fate, he watched the schooner slip off into the now light-hanging mist and vanish!
The boy was alone in the Pacific solitude with nothing but his own strength to rely on, and Nat knew that long before he could be picked up his powers would have been exhausted. It was the most trying moment of all his life, and Nat, as we know, had faced grave perils in his career.
But the young Motor Ranger was in a position in which thinking could accomplish nothing—action was the thing.
Treading water, so as to conserve all his strength, he looked about him. For a brief interval he had cherished a hope that he might catch a glimpse of the "Nomad" in the now clearing atmosphere. But this hope proved to be a chimera. No trace of the power cruiser was to be seen.
Nat gave a low groan.
"I don't see what is going to become of me," he thought. "If assistance does not soon arrive from some quarter, it will be too late. And yet where can I look for aid? Captain Akers, and Joe, are both sound sleepers. Unless that monster should attack them, they may not awaken till daylight. By that time my body will be at the bottom of the Pacific."
The boy gave way entirely to his gloomy forebodings. And there was a good excuse for Nat's apprehension. A swimmer's endurance is not unlimited. He had never tested his powers to the uttermost in the water, but he was pretty sure that if he was still on the surface when day broke that he would be singularly fortunate.
Suddenly something bumped against the lad in the darkness.
Nat gave a cry half of alarm. For one instant he thought of sharks and all that an attack by those ferocious monsters would mean.
The next instant, however, he realized that what had bumped him in the darkness was nothing more nor less than a largish stick of timber. Apparently it had once been a spar on some castaway vessel. But whatever its past history, Nat hailed it with joy. Seizing on it, he buoyed himself up and felt greatly relieved, both mentally and physically. With this support under him, he could remain on the surface much longer than would otherwise have been possible. His spirits rose. Perhaps, after all, he would be saved. The coming of the bit of wood had seemed providential, but Nat, looking about him, now perceived that its coming was not so accidental as it had seemed. The water all about him was thickly strewn with logs and boxes and barrels.
Seemingly he was in some sort of current which had attracted all this miscellaneous flotsam.
All at once the solution occurred to him.
The great Pacific Drift!
He was on the bosom of that mysterious current. This could scarcely be doubted. But the thought brought with it a dismal sense of isolation and depression.
Ships steered clear of the Drift. There was too much debris floating on its surface to suit them.
That being the case he stood still less of a chance of attracting the attention of some vessel than he had first hoped.
With such unpleasant thoughts to bear him company, Nat passed the night away, clinging to his friendly log. It was to its timely arrival that he owed the fact that he was on the surface of the ocean instead of being drowned from exhaustion.
The sun rose on an unclouded expanse of sea. The water shone as bluely under the rays of the luminary as did the sky. A burning, intense steel-like blue.
Nat, casting despairingly about for a sail, or the sign of a ship, could meet with nothing to mar the desolate monotony of the ocean wastes. He seemed to be alone on the wide, spreading waters.
As the sun rose higher it grew hotter. All the world seemed to be on fire. The heat burned the salt into Nat's drenched skin and caused him excruciating pain.
By noon the lad, suffering intensely for lack of water, was half delirious. Floating out there in the broad Pacific on a weed-grown, barnacled log, he babbled of green shady groves and running mountain streams.
He heard his voice rattling on in its delirium with the detached interest of a person listening to somebody else.
Yet he knew it was himself talking in that rambling, foolish way.
"I must be going crazy!" he gasped. "Oh, heaven! for one drop of cold water."
He raised his eyes and beheld, coming toward him, something that almost made him release his grip of the log from sheer astonishment.