CHAPTER V MYSTERY IN THE FOG

While Sandy watched the amphibian and Dick stared at the rapidly approaching sea plane, Larry gazed at the swift hydroplane and noted the feverish attempt on the yacht to get its tender going as it struck the surging water.

Swiftly he snapped the binoculars to his eyes as they receded from the yacht in the onrush of their zoom.

A woman in dark clothes had rushed behind the after cabin.

She must have tossed the life preserver from the stern.

But there was a woman on the bridge with the white uniformed captain and a navigating officer. She was in dark clothes! But she had been there all the time. He suddenly recalled the French maid Jeff had mentioned in the hotel. That answered his puzzled wonder. He knew who had thrown that life preserver, at any rate. It could not be the mistress. It left only the maid to suspect.
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Fast as a dart the hydroplane cut the surges.

“She’ll get there—they see the life preserver!” he cried, looking past the tilting wing as they executed a split-S to turn to head back the quickest possible way.

“The amphibian can set down on the water and she’ll pass the place—already there’s somebody climbing out of the front cockpit onto the wing—to grab the thing as they pass!” Sandy muttered.

“That seaplane is coming fast!” mused Dick. “What a race! It will be a wonder if there isn’t a smash when they all come together!”

It took only seconds for the race to conclude.

With a warning cry that was drowned by their engine noise, Larry saw that the amphibian was in such a line of flight that it must be crossed by the course of the hydroplane—and from the respective speeds, as well as he could judge, there might be either a collision or one of the craft must alter its course.

“The seaplane is almost down on the water—and coming like an arrow toward that white preserver!” gasped Dick. “Will its wings hit the yacht?”

“Can’t we do anything at all?” Sandy wondered desperately.
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Evidently Jeff either caught his thought or decided on a course through his own quick wit.

Opening the throttle full-on, he kicked rudder and depressed his left wing. Around came the airplane. Skidding out of her course from the momentum and the sharp application of control, she moved sharply upward and sidewise.

Deftly Jeff caught the skid.

Righted, Sandy exultantly screeched at the maneuver.

Flying fast, in a steep descent, they went across the nose of the amphibian, and in the turmoil of their propeller wash she went almost out of control, and before her pilot caught up his stability the hydroplane raced across her path in a slanting line and made for the small round object bobbing in the trough between two swells.

But that gave the seaplane an advantage.

Quick to take it, dipping a wing and kicking rudder, the seaplane’s pilot swerved a little, leveled off, and set down in a smother of foam, and on his wing also a man climbed close to the tip!

“Where’s the one who was on the amphibian wing?” Larry wondered.

“In the water, spilled by our wash,” he decided.
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He had no time to pay attention to that situation. The imminent culmination of the race chained his gaze.

“The tender is almost there—oh!” gasped Sandy, “the seaplane must be rammed by the tender!”

But the yacht’s boat, with its motor hastily started, and cold—lost way as the engine sputtered and died!

Slackening speed, the seaplane raced along until, with a hand clinging to a brace and his body leaning far over the dancing waves, its passenger on the wing scooped up the life preserver.

Almost immediately the seaplane began to get off the water.

The tender, its engine missing badly, turned its attention to the man in the water, but before it could get to him or near him Sandy, Dick and Larry saw that he caught the tail assembly of the amphibian and scrambling over the fuselage as the craft picked up speed, fell flat on his stomach just behind the pilot’s place and clung tightly while the craft got “on the step” and went into the air in a swift moil of foam and a roaring of its engine.
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Outgeneraled, the hydroplane cut speed and swung toward the yacht, followed by the tender.

The race was out of their hands.

“It depends on us!” panted Sandy. “Jeff—get after that seaplane!”

Their pilot needed no instructions.

Kicking rudder and dipping a wing, almost wetting it in the spray of a breaking comber, he flung his airplane into a new line of flight, reversed controls, giving opposite rudder and aileron, got his craft on a stable keel and gave it the gun as he snapped up the flippers to lift her nose and climb after the retreating ’plane.

Far behind them in their swift chase, with every ounce of power put into their engine and their whole hearts urging it to better speed, the Sky Patrol saw the amphibian swerve toward shore and give up the try for whatever that precious life preserver had attached to it.

That something had been cast overboard, tied to the float, was obvious to Larry, Dick and Sandy.

Nothing else explained its employment.

What a chase! Speed was in their favor, because the seaplane, fast as it was, lacked the power of their engine which they learned later that Jeff had selected for that very quality.

Overhauling the seaplane was not the question.
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Their problem was to get above it, to ride it down, force it to take the sea or to come down in a crackup on shore if that must be—before it could lose itself in that dull, gloomy, lowering bank of fog ahead.

For that fog the seaplane was making at full speed.

“Climb, Jeff!” Sandy begged, hoping their pilot could ride down the craft ahead.

But Jeff held a level course. He had to, in order to maintain the advantage of speed. He thought he could get alongside their quarry before the mist swallowed it, hid it, ended the pursuit.

In that he was beaten by only a hundred feet.

Into the murky folds of the thick mist dived the seaplane.

Hardly more than two hundred feet behind, they felt the cold, clammy fingers of the cloud touch their shrinking faces.

Jeff cut the gun.

They strained their ears.

Where was the seaplane? Would it climb above the murk, glide straight through it and down, swerve and glide—or dive out and risk leveling off and setting down just beneath the bank so that its rapidly coming folds, and the silent sea would make a safe and comfortable concealment?
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Slowly, almost in a “graveyard” glide, so flat was the descent, to hold flying speed and stay as high as they could, their airplane moved along. They listened.

Only the raucous cry of a seagull cut into that chill silence!

The fog kept its secrets.

“This can’t last long, for us,” thought Larry. “We’ll be down to the water before we know it!”

Much the same idea made Dick peer anxiously over the cowling.

“They must be listening for us, in the seaplane,” Sandy decided. “I know there was a pilot and the man who got the life preserver. I wish I could have gotten a good look at either one, but the pilot had goggles and his helmet to hide his face and the other man had his back turned to us. Where can they be? What are they doing?”

They could not wait for the answer.

Through a thin cleft in the heavy mist, not far below them the dark outlines of eel-grass, flanking two sides of a channel in the swampy shore line stood out, for an instant, clear and menacing.
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“Jeff!” warned Sandy.

Dick echoed the cry. Jeff had already caught the threat of that swamp below them. They could not risk going a foot lower. The pilot opened his throttle, picking up climbing speed to the roar of his engine.

“We had to give in first,” Larry decided ruefully.

Not only had they given in. Jeff, it appeared, had given up. In thickening mist the risks were too great.

They had given up.

Jeff was climbing for the top of the bank, where he could come into the clear, get some idea of his location and return to report defeat to the yacht whose captain probably lay-to, waiting for news.

Nor did Jeff again cut the gun to listen.

“Oh, well,” Dick was always hopeful, “maybe we’ll get a ‘break’ sooner or later.”

Up, and still climbing, the airplane continued through the fog.

Low banks favored them.

With suddenly thinning rifts parting overhead they shot out into the clear sunlight. Beneath, stretching up disappointed fingers of murk lay the bank of fog.

“Look—toward shore!” screamed Sandy.