"Then you're too far in by some three miles," answered the policeman.

"Thank you, cap'n," acknowledged the sailing master of the sloop.

"You're welcome," the policeman continued, "but ease off your sheet and lay to. We want to come aboard."

"You can't!" flatly retorted the skipper.

"You're wrong there," retorted the policeman. "This is a police party, and I tell you that we are coming aboard. Lay to, or we shall have to start a lot of trouble for you."

In the policeman's hand suddenly glistened a revolver. Tom ran the motor boat close alongside. With a snarl the man left off his sheet. The policeman and d.i.c.k Prescott leaped aboard the craft, Tom and Harry following.

"This is a cheeky outrage!" snarled the skipper, scowling at the invaders.

"Then keep the change, and welcome," laughed the policeman, taking his stand close to the skipper.

d.i.c.k Prescott made a dive at the cabin door, which was closed.

"Open this door!" he summoned.

As the door did not open d.i.c.k placed his shoulder against it.

"Open the door, or I'll break it down," d.i.c.k insisted.

There was still no answer. Thereupon Prescott proceeded to put his threat into execution. Harry bounded forward to help. Under their combined a.s.sault the door gave way.

Lieutenant Prescott was the first to enter the dark little cabin. Poor as the light was his eyes caught sight of something that made him gasp.

"This is the big capture of the season!" cried d.i.c.k jubilantly.

CHAPTER XIX

A NEW MYSTERY PEEPS IN

"Get out of here, or you'll get something you don't want," roared an ugly voice at the farther end of the cabin.

At sound of that voice Tom Reade started. He thrust his head in the open doorway.

"Hullo, Evarts!" called the young chief engineer.

"Get out of here!" came the furious order.

"So you've openly joined the enemy, Evarts?" demanded Tom, as his eyes fell upon the object that had first claimed Lieutenant d.i.c.k Prescott's attention.

"You've no business here! Get out, or I'll shoot," cried Evarts, defiantly.

"Don't be too quick on the shoot," warned the Blixton policeman, who still had his own revolver in his hand. "This is a police party, and you're under arrest. Start any shooting trouble, and the air will be full of it."

"Clear out, and I'll come outside and talk with you," proposed Evarts, for it really was the discharged foreman.

"All right," nodded the policeman. "Gentlemen, let him step outside."

The others left the entrance to the cabin, As Evarts, his pistol now back in his pocket, stepped sullenly outside, Harry Hazelton dropped back into the doorway.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Evarts," grinned the police officer, deftly slipping handcuffs on the fellow's wrists.

"This is treachery!" stormed the prisoner. "I didn't surrender to you.

I only came out to talk with you."

"If you didn't surrender, then excuse me, and go ahead and put up a fight,"

laughed the policeman, handily removing Evarts's revolver from a hip pocket.

"Now, look in here, Tom," urged d.i.c.k. "Do you see what caught my eye?"

Prescott pointed to a sharp-nosed cylinder, some eight feet long. Just as it lay the propeller at the other end was invisible to one at the doorway of the cabin.

"It's a home-made imitation of a Whitehead torpedo," Lieutenant d.i.c.k went on, in explanation. "If it proves to be charged with explosives then the mere having of it aboard this sloop will prove embarra.s.sing to these two prisoners to explain in court. If it isn't loaded, that will be almost as bad, as such a torpedo can be rather easily loaded, and then set in operation by clock-work machinery that will control the propeller."

"Young man, you seem to think you know a good deal about torpedoes,"

sneered Evarts.

"He ought to," Harry retorted quietly. "He's a West Point man and an army officer. Therefore, he's a specialist in some kinds of explosives."

Evarts's face turned somewhat paler at this information of having an army officer on hand as a witness.

"Do you call me a prisoner, too?" asked the man at the tiller uneasily.

"Something like it, I guess," nodded d.i.c.k.

"Say, but that's a pretty rank deal against an honest man," protested the skipper hoa.r.s.ely. "I hired this boat out to that man, the one you call Evarts, but I didn't know what he was up to."

"You didn't know that torpedoes are used for wicked work either, eh?"

pressed Lieutenant d.i.c.k.

"I'll swear that I didn't know what it was that he brought on board," cried the skipper. "Evarts said it was a new device for killing fish at wholesale."

"You may be telling the truth," Tom broke in.

"I am," declared the skipper eagerly.

"Then explain it to the court," Reade continued. "If you can prove to a judge and a jury that you're an honest man, and always have been one, you may get off on the charge that will be made against you."

"Then you don't believe me?" asked the skipper anxiously.

"It isn't for me to say," Tom replied crisply. "It's a job for a judge and a jury."