tone. He tried to slip into his coat and cover the life jacket he wore.
“I said ‘your carelessness.’ I don’t care to use a harsher word. How did it happen, Malvin, that you wore a life jacket to-night?”
“A life jacket, sir?”
“Yes; the one you put on under your coat. Surely you did not have an intuition that we were going to be wrecked?”
Ordinarily a bright, lively lad, Ralph could be stern enough when he chose. His experiences out west and in old Mexico had broadened and developed the youth whom we first encountered on a visit to Jack Merrill’s ranch in search of the health he had almost lost by overstudy at Stonefell College.
Ralph was not that boy now. He was the stern questioner of a man whose recent actions had surely justified him in entertaining black suspicions of the fellow. For the first time Malvin hesitated as Ralph shot out the question about the life jacket.
“Oh, yes, sir. The life jacket, sir. Yes, you see – ”
His voice trailed off. But Ralph pressed him harder.
“Come, I am waiting for an explanation. If one is not forthcoming I shall inform my father of your conduct.”
“I don’t see why I can’t wear a life jacket if I want to,” said Malvin, at length, in a voice that, for the first time, held a note of sullen defiance. “I know these Gallops better than you do, Master Stetson. I have always worn a life jacket when running them.”
“Yes,” said Hardware dryly, “you are more timid than we thought you, Malvin.”
“Never mind, Harry,” struck in Ralph; “tend that searchlight and keep a bright lookout for the Needles. We must pass them to port.”
“All right,” responded Hardware cheerfully; “luckily, there’s no ‘needles in a haystack’ business about them. They are as clear as the freckles on Persimmons’ face. Don’t worry.”
He began swinging the search-light off to the left-hand side of the boat, searching for the group of sharp-pointed rocks known as the Needles, which were by no means the menace to navigation that Big Nigger was.
“So you always wear a life jacket in running the rapids?” insisted Ralph, as his companion carried out his instructions.
“Always, sir; yes, sir. It’s the safest plan.”
“Well, I guess you are entitled to considerable praise for your foresight, Malvin,” said Ralph meaningly. “You can go forward.”
“All right, sir. Very well, sir,” was the rejoinder. Malvin once more appeared to have full control of himself.
He descended the two or three steps leading from the raised bridge from which the navigation of the River Swallow was directed. As his figure vanished forward in the darkness, Harry Ware turned to his chum.
“What do you make of that fellow, Ralph?”
“He’s a puzzle to which we have no answer – as yet,” was the reply.
“A puzzle, all right. I sure agree with you. But as to the answer part – ”
“Well?”
“I rather think that we are not so far off from the solution as you fancy. For instance, this business to-night.”
“Let’s hear what you make of it.”
“Why, it looked to me as if the fellow deliberately tried to wreck the boat.”
“But for what earthly reason?” demanded Ralph, in an astounded tone.
“Well, for one thing, we have supplanted him on board her. You must remember that before we came up here your dad had given Malvin absolute charge of the craft. I’ve heard that he took full advantage of this. The boat was seen cruising about at all hours of the night.”
“Even so. Granted that he dislikes us, even hates us, although he has shown no signs of harboring such a feeling.”
“I’m not so sure of that. Under that smooth manner he hides a vindictive nature. I’ve caught him looking at you once or twice, when he thought you weren’t looking and that nobody saw him, in a way that made me think he didn’t like you any too well.”
“Possibly he can’t be blamed for that, either. It is rather a come-down for him to have to take orders where he was used to giving them instead. But, even assuming all this, what reason would he have to try to wreck the River Swallow?”
“I imagine that in the answer to that lies the solution of that puzzle you were talking about a while back.”
“Well, let’s suppose – although I don’t for a minute believe it – that he actually was fiendish enough to try to destroy the craft out of malice, would not he have gone to the bottom, too?”
“I’m not so sure. Malvin is reputed to be the strongest swimmer in these parts. He was wrecked in a canoe in the rapids once and swam to an eddy and eventually reached the shore. Then, too, to-night he had on a life jacket. Does not that point to the fact that he believed some accident was going to happen, in which it would be necessary for him to swim for his life?”
“Oh, as to that, he had a good explanation for it,” responded Ralph.
“So I suppose,” was Harry Ware’s dry comment.
“After all, we may be unduly excited and manufacturing a melodramatic scare out of nothing at all,” pursued Ralph. “Well, there go the Needles! In a minute more we’ll be out of the Gallops, and for once I shan’t be sorry. That was just about as near to a smash-up as I care to come.”
The River Swallow shot onward for a short distance, and then, as she entered smoother water, Ralph rang for full speed ahead on both engines. He had hardly done this, when Hardware gave a sudden yell and pointed frantically ahead of them.
Through the night the gray, dim outlines of a passing craft, slipping along under the shore of one of the islands which dotted the other side of the Gallops, was visible. She carried no lights and was moving at a swift rate of speed.
In addition to the fact that the other craft carried no lights, she had risked collision with the River Swallow by cutting right across her bows. Both these actions were gross violations of the river law. The two boys stared into the darkness ahead as the gray shadow slipped on toward the Canadian shore.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” burst from Harry Ware’s lips. “It’s the ghost craft again.”
“Ghost nothing! If we’d hit her we’d have found her solid enough, I’ll bet,” declared Ralph. “Clap the search-light on her, Hardware. We’ve seen that craft so often lately that the thing is getting on my nerves. Men who are out on lawful errands don’t sneak about without lights. Let’s show her up and see what sort of a boat she is, and who mans her.”
Harry obediently turned his attention once more to the search-light. But though he swung it assiduously in the direction in which the “ghost craft,” as he called the mysterious gray motor boat, had last been seen, its rays failed to reveal a sign of her.
“Well, she can appear and vanish in a mighty spook-like fashion, even though she may be built
