CHAPTER XVIII OUTWITTED!

From their cockpits Sandy and Dick watched the hydroplane. At cruising speed their airplane made nearly three miles to the hydroplane’s one. Its mysterious occupant must know that they were trailing him, but he held to a straight course so that his lights were never in a different place as their craft above swung to show its observers the red and then the green.

“He’s making straight for Greenwich, on the Connecticut side,” Dick decided, knowing a good deal about the Sound ports.

“How are you fixed?” Jeff spoke to their youthful pilot through his tube.

Briefly Larry swung his head, nodding.

“We’ll be getting tired of turning to the left all the time,” Jeff suggested. “Think you could follow a sort of zig-zag, flying slantwise across the course of that-there boat, then coming around an angle and flying slantways back to the other side?”

Larry nodded emphatically.
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“Good! Here we go—to the right. Get your eye on that Fall River Liner, coming up the Sound—that’s about the point of our first leg.

“Now, touch of right rudder and right aileron—and stick back to neutral. There! She’s level. Keep moving stick and rudder a bit, steadily. Now she’s banked and turning. Neutralize! That’s the ticket.

“There! The nose is on that steamer. That’s it—don’t let her swing off that point for awhile—and watch that you don’t nose down—that’s right, back a bit on that-there stick, up she comes, stick back to neutral.”

Thus directed, and admonished, Larry managed to give the airplane a swinging, zig-zag course, so that its greater speed was used up in the longer legs of its slanted progress, and since the hydroplane did not try any tricks or change its path, the Sound was being crossed in the wake of the steamer by the boat and in a corkscrew path by its aerial bloodhound.

“I think I know what is going to happen,” Sandy decided, as they crossed the course of the hydroplane so that its two tiny colored beams showed at the same instant. “He’ll wait till we get closer in to the Connecticut shore line and then he’ll ‘douse the glim’ and leave us with nothing to watch.”
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Bending forward Dick began to rummage in a compartment built in his section of the seating space.

He believed that he could outwit any effort to escape by taking advantage of the landing flares, attached to small parachutes, which Jeff carried as a precaution during his former night hops to the old estate.

“Better cut the gun and glide down a couple of hundred feet,” Larry heard Jeff’s voice in his earphones. “If he tries any tricks——”

“That’s queer!” Sandy exclaimed to himself, as he stared down and saw the small, swift boat open a vivid, glowing eye at the bow.

The helmsman had switched on its searchlight.

“What’s that for?” Dick wondered.

Jeff, warned by the trail of light on the water below, took a quick look.

“He must be looking for his landing!” Sandy called.

Larry, holding the airplane in a moderate glide, saw the beam glowing out beyond the airplane’s nose, felt that he was as low as he dared be with land ahead, and drew back on the stick to bring up the craft to a level keel, opening the throttle as the glide became a flat course about three hundred feet higher than the water.
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“He’s swinging the boat out to open water again!” cried Sandy.

“There it goes around!” shouted Dick, unheard, excited, as the beam of the hydroplane swung in a wide arc from shore, heading once more back toward Long Island.

“He’s going back!” Sandy exulted. “We’ll get him!”

“Good boy,” Jeff spoke to Larry. “You made that turn without a hitch. With that searchlight to guide you, I don’t need to talk through this-here thing any more.”

Larry had no trouble following the boat with the white beam as a guide.

It puzzled Sandy, and he swung around to look questioningly back at Dick. The latter, unable to see his expression, but guessing his idea, shook his head.

“It’s time to find out what’s what!” he muttered.

As Larry banked and came around on a new slant across the hydroplane’s path, which seemed not so true to the straight line as it had been, Dick secured a parachute-equipped landing flare, sent it over safely past the wings, and watched the white glare light up the surface of the water.
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To Larry’s disappointment, they were so far to one side and behind the hydroplane that the flare failed to disclose its occupant.

He held up a hand, and pointed ahead, then opened the throttle, came onto a straightaway course over the hydroplane, rapidly overhauled it and got well ahead. Then, cutting the gun and gliding, as it came up under them, he signaled, and Dick, waiting, ignited a second flare.

All four of the Sky Patrol members gasped as the light blazed out.

Larry looked back at his companions, amazedly.

“It’s—empty—nobody in it!” he cried.