With several hours of daylight still ahead, they entered upon the great wide Pamlico Sound, which in places is all of twenty miles from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. As it is extremely shallow in many places, this body of water makes a treacherous sailing ground, and many a boat has met with disaster while navigating it.

They had not been an hour afloat on Pamlico before Jack was sorry he had started. Once more clouds had scurried above the horizon, and were mounting with great fleetness. And this time he believed that the storm would not prove a tempest in a teapot, as the last one had turned out to be.

Vainly they looked about them for a haven of safety. There was absolutely no point of land where the water was of sufficient depth to allow of their finding a temporary harbor.

The clouds were climbing higher with a rapidity that told of the wind that must soon sweep across that wide body of water with cruel violence.

"Whew! perhaps we ain't in for it now!" called George, as he drew up closer to the others, to find out what Jack had to say; for strange as it might seem, when peril confronted the boys of the Motor Boat Club, they seemed to turn toward Jack with much the same confidence the needle shows in pointing directly to the north.

"What can we do, Jack?" asked Nick, in more or less alarm, as they plainly heard the distant growl of thunder; and in imagination the fat boy could see himself in the cranky speed boat, as she caught the full force of the wind, and turned turtle in the twenty-mile sound, amid the crash of the storm.

CHAPTER XV.

A WARM WELCOME TO THE STORMY CAPE.

There was no time to waste.

One last glance around told Jack the necessity for prompt action, if he wished to pull the little flotilla out of the bad hole in which they seemed settled.

The storm was racing up from the southwest, beyond the distant mainland. Consequently, the eastern side of the great shallow sound would presently become a boisterous place for craft the size of theirs.

"We've got to head into it, fellows!" was his decision, as he began to change the course of the _Tramp_ to conform with his views.

It looked like heroic treatment, but neither Herb nor George murmured.

They saw what the commodore had in mind, and that every mile they were able to forge ahead would decrease the peril. Indeed, if they could only manage to reach a point close in to that western sh.o.r.e, they would escape the brunt of the rising waves, and only have to think of holding their own against the wind itself.

"Full speed, _Comfort_?" called Jack, waving an encouraging hand toward the other.

Now George found himself perplexed as to what his course should be. He knew he could make almost twice the speed that the lumbering broad beam boat was able to display at her best. The question was, did he dare risk it?

True, the _Wireless_ was in more danger out on that wide stretch than any of the others, and it seemed good policy for him to speed for shelter. But what if one of those exasperating breakdowns, to which the mechanism of the narrow boat seemed subject, should take place without warning?

George shuddered as he contemplated such a possibility. He could easily imagine his feelings upon being cast helplessly adrift in the midst of a raging gale, with his tried and true chums hidden from his sight by the rain and blowing spindrift.

And so his decision was quickly made. Of the two evils he chose what seemed to be the lesser. He would stick to the fleet. Then, in case of trouble, they could help each other like comrades.

Jack had kept an eye on the _Wireless_, for he guessed that just this puzzling question would come up for George to solve. And when he failed to see the speed boat shooting away, leaving the others in the lurch, he understood that the wise skipper had decided on the better way.

They were making fine headway, but all the same the storm was doing likewise; and unfortunately, at the time, they happened to be quite a few miles away from the sh.o.r.e that promised shelter.

"What ails George, do ye know?" questioned Jimmy, who could not understand why the other did not make with all speed ahead, as he had been known to do on a former occasion, considering that the best course.

"That sudden stop on the part of his engine gave him a bad feeling,"

was Jack's reply. "He doesn't trust it as he did, and is afraid that it may repeat when he is in the midst of the storm. So he's going to stick by us, through thick and thin."

"It does his head credit, I'm thinkin'," declared Jimmy; and then, as he stared hard into that inky s.p.a.ce ahead, that was gradually creeping up toward them, he continued: "Sure now, do ye think we can make it, Jack darlint?"

"Well, we've just got to, that's all," the other replied, firmly. "If the wind doesn't blow us right out of the water, we'll keep on bucking directly into it. The fight will be a tough one, Jimmy; but make up your mind we _must_ win out. Half the battle is in confidence--that and eternal watchfulness."

It was in this manner that Jack Stormways always impressed his chums with some of the zeal by which his own actions were governed. That "never-give-up" spirit had indeed carried him through lots of hotly contested battles on the gridiron or the diamond, wresting victory many times from apparent defeat.

So they continued to push steadily on. Jack counted every minute a gain. He kept a close watch upon the surface of the sound, knowing that here they must first of all discover the swoop of the gale, as its skirmis.h.i.+ng breath struck the water.

The last movement of air seemed to have died out, yet this was the calm that often precedes the coming of the storm, the deadly lull that makes the tempest seem all the more terrible when it breaks.

Jack calculated that they had been some five miles from the western sh.o.r.e at the time they changed their southern course, and headed to starboard. And as _Comfort_ could do no better than ten miles an hour, under the most favorable conditions, it stood to reason that about half an hour would be needed to place them in a position of safety.

"We won't get it, that's flat," he was saying to himself, as he noted the way in which the clouds gathered for the rush.

Picking up the little megaphone which he carried, he shouted a few sentences to the others. While the air around them remained so calm, the thunder was booming in the quarter where that black cloud hung suspended, so that talking was already out of the question unless one used some such contrivance for aiding the voice.

"George, better fall in just ahead of us, where we can get a line to you in case you have engine trouble. Two sharp blasts will tell us that you want help. Herb, try and keep as close to me as is safe! We must stick it out together, hear?"

Both of the other skippers waved their hands to indicate that they understood, and doubtless George was given fresh courage to find how calm and confident Jack seemed to face the approaching difficulty.

The land was now less than two miles away, and a faint hope had begun to stir in Jack's heart that there might be enough delay to allow their reaching a point of safety.

This, however, was dissipated when he suddenly discovered a white line that looked as though a giant piece of chalk had been drawn along the water. The squall had pounced down upon Pamlico, and was rus.h.i.+ng toward them at the rate of at least a mile a minute.

"Hold hard!" shouted Jack through his megaphone.

Then he devoted himself to engineering the _Tramp's_ destiny. Jimmy knew what was expected of him in the emergency, and was nerved to acquit himself with credit. While his skipper showed himself to be so cool and self-possessed Jimmy could not think of allowing the spasm of fear that pa.s.sed over him to hold sway. What if that line of foamy water was increasing in size as it rushed at them, until it a.s.sumed dreadful proportions? The _Tramp_ had pa.s.sed safely through other storms, and with Jack at the wheel all must be serene.

So Jimmy crouched there at the motor, ready to do whatever he was told--crouched and gaped and s.h.i.+vered, yet with compressed teeth was resolved to stand by his s.h.i.+pmate to the end.

Then the foam-crested water struck the flotilla with a crash. First the narrow _Wireless_ was seen to surge forward, rear up at a frightfully perpendicular angle, until it almost seemed as though the frail craft must be hurled completely over; and then swoop furiously down into the basin that followed the comber.

George held her firmly in line, and somehow managed to keep her head straight into the shrieking wind, though he frankly confessed that his heart was in his mouth when she took that header.

But almost at the same instant the other boats tried the same frightful plunge, and they, too, survived. Jack gave a sigh of relief when he saw that all of them had pa.s.sed through the preliminary skirmish unharmed, for it had been that which gave him the greatest concern.

And now the work began in earnest. They had to fight for every foot they won against the combined forces of wind and wave. Had they been a mile or so further out in the sound, so that the seas had a better chance to become monstrous, nothing could have saved any of them. And Jack's chums once again had reason to be thankful for the far-seeing qualities which their commodore developed when he changed their course, and headed into the teeth of the coming gale.

At least several things favored them now. George's boat seemed to be behaving wonderfully well, for one thing. Then again, after that first swoop the gale had slackened somewhat in intensity, as is frequently the case; though presently they could expect it to become more violent than ever, when it caught its second wind, as Jerry expressed it.

Then, another hopeful thing was the fact that with every yard pa.s.sed over they were really getting the benefit of drawing closer to the sh.o.r.e that was serving as a sort of s.h.i.+eld from the wind.

The seas too gradually declined, since there was lacking the water necessary to build them up.

Jack had one thing to worry over. He knew that on such occasions considerable water would be swept from the western side of the sound, and this was apt to send the boats aground unless luck favored them.

Such a condition would keep them from going further in any great distance, since the risk of striking became too p.r.o.nounced.

"It's all right, Jimmy!" he called to his helper, knowing how anxious the latter must necessarily be; "we've got to a point now where we're safe. We could even drop our mudhooks over right here, and ride it out, if we wanted. But it's better to go on a little further."

"Whoo! wasn't the same a scorcher, though?" Jimmy shouted, a sickly grin coming over his good-natured, freckled face.