Chapter VII: Off for the Bahamas

Next morning Matt and Dick were astir at three o'clock. The gasoline tank was filled and a reserve supply of fuel taken aboard. The oil supply was also looked after, and rations of food and water were stowed in the car. This accomplished, there was a short flight to the gas works where the bag of the airship was filled to its utmost capacity.

The twenty-five hundred dollar check was left with a friend to be deposited, and by six-thirty the Hawk and her crew were again on the beach with everything in readiness for a record flight.

Carl's delight, as soon as he learned what was in prospect, reached a point that made it almost morbid. He was of little use in the outfitting, and ran circles around the Hawk trying to do something which either Matt or Dick was already doing. Finally, about six o'clock, Matt sent Carl to the hotel to get their small amount of personal luggage and to bring a hot breakfast for all hands.

At a quarter to seven, when Townsend came along the beach, the hurried meal had been finished. The owner of the _Grampus_ gave the boys a cheery good morning, and began placing in the car a bundle of maps and charts, and a sextant.

"I presume," said he, "that we can figure our course all right by dead reckoning, but in case we find any difficulty about that, the sextant will enable us to determine our exact location. The maps are all of the coast line, and are so complete that I think we shall be able to tell, just from the look of the country over which we are passing, where we are. I have also a barometer, and, as luck will have it, fair weather is indicated. There's a compass, too, wrapped up with the maps, and if you lads have looked after the victualling, I think we are fully equipped for a dash to the Bahamas."

For Townsend's benefit, Matt enumerated the stores that had been placed aboard.

"You have missed nothing, Matt," observed Townsend, approvingly, "and I am pleased to see it. If there is nothing else to keep us, we had better cast off and make the start."

Matt gave Townsend his position aboard. Dick and Carl knew the stations they were to occupy, and after they had released the cables and thrown them into the car, they took up their customary places.

Matt turned over the engine, which, after a volley of "pops," settled down into steady running order.

"South by west, Matt," called Townsend. "That will start us across Delaware Bay in the vicinity of Cape May."

"South by west it is, sir," said Matt, adjusting the ascensional and steering rudder to carry the Hawk upward and in the direction indicated.

At a height of five hundred feet the Hawk was brought to an even keel, the racing propeller carrying her through the air at a speed which was slightly better than thirty miles an hour.

"Fine!" exclaimed Townsend, taking a look over the rail and watching Absecon Island slip away behind them. "We'll eat up the miles, at this pace, and with no stops to make."

"But the _Grampus_ is also eating up the miles," said Matt, "and will probably make no more stops than we do. How fast can she run, Mr. Townsend?"

"She can do fifteen miles submerged, and twenty to twenty-five on the surface."

"Her course to the Bahamas will be more direct than ours."

"True enough, but our speed is so much faster that, in spite of the roundabout course we're taking, we'll be able to reach Turtle Key and be there to receive the _Grampus_ when she arrives."

"Durtle Key," put in Carl. "Dot's vere ve vas going, eh?"

"That's where the iron chest is supposed to be, and, of course, that's where the _Grampus_ will make for. The Bahamas are all of coral formation and are underlaid with many caverns. For the most part, the islands are hollow; and it is in a hollow under Turtle Key that the Man from Cape Town claimed to have hidden the chest."

"Iss dere pread fruit und odder dropical t'ings on der island?" asked Carl, who was looking forward to a brief period of romance in an island paradise.

"As described on the chart," replied Townsend, "Turtle Key is no more than a hummock of coral, bare as the palm of your hand, and with a surface measuring less than an acre in extent. There is no water, no trees, and no inhabitants if we except the turtles."

Carl was visibly disappointed.

"I vas hoping I could climb some trees und shake down a gouple oof loafs oof pread fruit," he mourned, "und I vas t'inking, meppy, dot I could catch a monkey und pring him pack, und a barrot vat couldt say t'ings. Py shiminy, I don'd like dot kind oof a tesert islandt."

"Where is it, Mr. Townsend," asked Dick, "on the eastern or western side of the group?"

"On the western side, just off Great Bahama Island and well in the Florida Straits."

"I sailed all through that group on the old _Billy Ruffian_," went on Dick, "wherever the channels were deep enough to float us. There's a good deal of shoal water, and a lot of places where you can go off soundings at a jump. That submarine, if she takes a straight course, will have to keep on the surface a good share of the time."

"Jurgens will take to the Florida Straits and then turn in when he gets opposite Turtle Key. That will give him deep water all the way. After I left you boys last night," added Townsend, shifting the subject, "I had a call from McMillan. He told me that the skipper of the _Crescent_ claimed to have had nothing to do with the picking up of Jurgens off the Heinz pier. Whistler, one of the men on the sailboat, got the three men comprising the crew on his side, and they overpowered the skipper, tied him hand and foot and laid him on the floor of the cuddy. Anyhow, McMillan says that when he boarded the _Crescent_, the skipper was helpless in the cabin and all the others who had been on the boat had disappeared. It looks a little 'fishy' but that must have been the way of it. The skipper of the _Crescent_ couldn't afford to harbor a fugitive like Jurgens."

"It was all a brazen piece of work from start to finish," observed Matt. "The capture of the _Grampus_ was second only to the desperate play Jurgens made when he stole the chart. Jurgens, from what I saw and heard while Holcomb and I were aboard the _Grampus_, knows a good deal about the submarine, but----"

"He learned all that while he was working in the shipyard," put in Townsend.

"But does he know enough to run the craft?" queried Matt.

"I think not. He and his gang are probably forcing Cassidy, my machinist, to run the submarine for him. If Cassidy, Burke and Harris, my men in the _Grampus_, succeeded in turning on their captors and recapturing the boat, we'll be having all our work for nothing--that is, so far as the _Grampus_ is concerned. In that event, we'll look for the iron chest."

"Dot's der talk!" cried Carl. "Ve vill findt der dreasure. It vas some birate dreasure, I bed you! I vouldt like to findt a chest full mit bieces oof eight und dot odder druck vat birates used to take from peobles pefore dey made dem valk der blank."

"Bosh, Carl!" exclaimed Dick, disgustedly. "You're a lubber to take stock in any such yarn. Anyhow, I should think you'd had enough to do with pirates."

This reference to the way Carl had butted into the moving pictures brought grins to the faces of Townsend and Matt. It was a sore spot with Carl, and he tried at once to get his companions to thinking of something else.

He picked up the sextant and turned it over and over in his hands.

"How you findt out vere ve vas mit dis?" he queried.

"Hand it over, Carl," replied Townsend, "and I'll show you."

Carl was standing by the rail. Just as he started to hand the sextant to Townsend, a gust of air struck the Hawk and she made a sidewise lurch that jerked the car uncomfortably. Carl let go the sextant and grabbed with both hands at the rail; and the sextant, flung a little outward by the motion of Carl's hand, slipped clear of the rail and dropped downward into space.

A cry of dismay escaped Townsend and Dick.

"Himmelblitzen!" growled Carl, very much put out with himself, "I vas aboudt as graceful as a hibbobotamus. Vat a luck! Vell, Misder Downsend, I puy you anodder."

"It isn't so easy to buy another, Carl," said Matt, circling the Hawk about and dropping earthward. "We've got to get that sextant, if we can. Watch close all of you, and try and see where it fell."

At that moment the Hawk had been approaching Stone Harbor, and was above the beach. The sextant may have been ruined by the fall, but Matt was hoping against hope that it would be found in usable condition, and that they would not have to delay their voyage to land at some seaport and buy another.