The Motor Rangers' Cloud Cruiser

CHAPTER I.

THE MAGNETIC ISLAND

“What do you make of the weather, Nat?”

Joe Hartley turned to Nat Trevor as he spoke, and scanned the face of the young leader of the adventure-seeking Motor Rangers with some anxiety.

But the stout and placid Joe’s unwonted look of apprehension found no reflection on the firm countenance of Nat Trevor, who stood as steadily at the wheel of the Nomad as if that sixty-foot, gasolene-driven craft was not, to use Joe’s phrase of a few moments before, pitching and tumbling “like a bucking broncho.”

“It does look pretty ugly for a fact, Joe,” rejoined Nat, after he had scrutinized the horizon on every side.

“And this is a part of the Pacific where we were warned before we left the Marquesas that we must look out for squalls,” returned Joe, still looking worried.

“Oh, well, the Nomad has weathered many a good hard blow, not to mention those waterspouts,” commented Nat. “I guess she’ll last through whatever is to come.”

At this moment a third boyish countenance was suddenly protruded from a hatchway leading to the Nomad’s engine-room.

“S-s-s-s-say, y-y-y-you chaps,” sputtered our old acquaintance, William – otherwise and more frequently Ding-Dong – Bell, “w-w-what’s in the w-w-w-wind?”

“A bit of a storm, I guess, Ding-Dong,” returned Nat, watching his steering carefully, so as to send the Nomad sliding easily over the long, oily swells, “but don’t you mind, old chap. She’ll stand it, never fear. How are your engines running?”

“L-l-l-like a d-d-d-dollar w-w-watch,” returned Ding-dong, with a note of pride in his tones.

“Good. Now if only we were farther to seaward of that island yonder, I’d feel easier,” commented Nat.

“Say, Nat,” struck in Joe, as Ding-dong dived below once more, “it seems to me we are a long time passing that island.”

“I agree with you, Joe. That is what made me ask Ding-dong about his engines. At the pace they are turning up, we should have left it behind us long ago, yet there it is, still on our starboard bow.”

“And we are getting closer in to it all the time, you’ll notice,” rejoined Joe.

“There must be some powerful currents hereabouts,” said Nat, looking for the first time a little bit troubled. “There’s something queer about that island, anyhow. I can’t find it on the chart. According to that, this part of the mid-south Pacific is absolutely free from islands or rocks.”

“Hullo,” cried Joe suddenly, “that’s odd! Look, Nat, the island isn’t really one island at all. It’s two of them.”

This paradoxical speech was really a correct explanation of the case, as it now appeared. The Nomad had, by this time, made some little progress over the rising sea, and as the bit of land “opened out,” it could be seen that there were, as Joe had said, two islands, with a narrow channel running in between them.

“Phew!” whistled Nat. “This complicates the situation. To make matters worse – ” He stopped short.

“Well?” demanded Joe.

“Never mind,” replied Nat; and then in an undertone he added to himself: “I may be wrong, but I’ll bet the hole out of a doughnut that we are being dragged round toward that passage.”

That such was actually the case, he realized to his dismay an instant later. Head the Nomad’s bow round as he would, some invisible force still dragged her in toward the two islands. It soon became apparent, too, that the narrow channel was, in reality, more in the nature of a cleft between the two masses of land. Its walls were steep and sheer and formed of grayish rock. It could now be seen that the water in this abyss was boiling and bubbling as if in a caldron.

Nat and Joe exchanged glances of dismay. It was no longer possible to disguise the fact that they were momentarily being sucked, as though by invisible yet resistless forces, toward this ominous looking chasm.

The three youths had set out for the California coast, on which was their home, some days before, from the Marquesas group of islands, where they had had some surprising adventures. What these were will be found set down in the third volume of this series, “The Motor Rangers on Blue Water.” It may be said here, briefly, that their experiences in the South Seas had included the routing of a rascally band, who had made a headquarters on one of the Marquesas Group, and the discovering of the rightful owner of some valuable sapphires which had come into their possession in a truly remarkable way.

Of how they acquired these sapphires, and of the adventures and perils through which they passed before they gained full possession, details will be found in the second volume of the Motor Ranger Series, namely, “The Motor Rangers Through the Sierras.” In that volume, we followed our youthful and enterprising heroes through the great Sierra range, and learned of their clever flouting of the schemes of the same band of rascals whom they re-encountered in the South Seas. Among other feats, they located and caused the destruction of the hitherto secret fortress of Colonel Morello, a notorious outlaw. This earned them his undying enmity, which he was not slow to display. In this volume, too, it was related how the lads found, in a miner’s abandoned hut, the wonderful sapphires.

It now remains, only briefly, to sketch the earlier experiences of the three lads, to give our readers a grasp of their characters. In the first volume of this series, then, which was called “The Motor Rangers’ Lost Mine,” the three lads set out for Lower California on a mission which was to involve them in unlooked-for complications.

This errand grew out of Nat’s employment as automobile expert by Mr. Montagu Pomery, the “Lumber King,” as the papers called him, who made his winter home at Santa Barbara. Nat, who lived with his mother, was, at that time, very poor, and much depended on his situation with the millionaire, in charge of his several cars. But Ed Dayton, who considered that Nat had superseded him in the place, made trouble for him. Aided by Donald Pomery, the lumber king’s son, a weak, unprincipled youth, he hatched up a plot, which, for a time, put Nat under a cloud. But Mr. Pomery himself proved Nat’s firm friend.

Owing to Mrs. Pomery’s interference, the millionaire was compelled to discharge Nat, but he almost immediately re-employed him on the confidential mission of which we have spoken. This was to visit Lower California and investigate conditions on his timber claims there. Much rare and valuable wood had been going astray, and Mr. Pomery suspected his superintendent, Diego Velasco. He lacked proof, however, and Nat he selected as a bright, trustworthy lad, who could carry out an investigation painstakingly.

Nat recalled that his dead father had been interested, in his youth, in a rich mine in Lower California, and the prospect of the trip, therefore, had a double fascination for him. Mr. Pomery provided an automobile, equipped in elaborate fashion, for the long trip, much of which was to be made through desert country. With Mr. Pomery’s permission, Nat invited his two chums, Joe Hartley, son of a well-to-do department store keeper, and William Bell, the stammering lad, to accompany him. The latter’s mother and the former’s father at first demurred considerably to the trip, but at last they gave their consent. Nat, for his part, had some trouble winning his mother over. But soon all was arranged, and they set out. How they discovered the Lost Mine, and Nat became rich, was all told in that book, together with many other adventures that befell them. The reader is now in a position to understand our chief characters, sturdy, intelligent Nat Trevor, with his curly black hair and dancing blue eyes; stout, red-faced Joe Hartley, always good-natured, though inclined to be a bit nervous, and Ding-dong Bell, the cheery, stuttering lad, whose eccentricities of speech provided much amusement for his companions.

The day on which this story opens was the seventh since their departure from the Marquesas on their return voyage to the Pacific Coast. They had left behind them their fellow adventurers, some of whom wished to return by steamer, while others were anxious to continue their travels in the fascinating South Seas. So far, smiling skies and sunny seas had been encountered. But this particular day had dawned with a smoky, red horizon, through which the rising sun blazed like a red-hot copper ball.

It had been oppressively hot – torrid, in fact. But although the air was motionless and heavy, the sea was far from being calm. It heaved with a swell that tossed the Nomad almost on her beam-ends at times. That some peculiar kind of tropical storm, or typhoon, was approaching, Nat felt small doubt. A glance at the barometer showed that that instrument had fallen with incredible rapidity. A candle, held in the thick, murky air, would have flamed straight skyward without a flicker.

Dinner was eaten without a change being observable in the weather conditions, and, on coming on deck to relieve Joe at the wheel while he went below to eat, Nat sighted the bit of land toward which they were now being drawn like a needle to a lodestone. In the meantime the weather had been growing more and more extraordinary. The copperish sky had deepened in color till a panoply of angry purple overspread the heaving sea. The sun glared weakly through the cloud curtains as through a fog. But still there had come no wind.

Hardly had the two lads on the bridge of the Nomad realized that they were inexorably being drawn toward the two islands, however, when from far off to the southwest there came a low, moaning sound. It seemed almost animal in character; like the lowing of an angry bull, in fact, was the comparison that occurred to Nat. The sound increased in violence momentarily, while the sky from purple changed to black, and a blast like that from an open oven door fanned their faces. Through this awe-inspiring twilight the Nomad continued her inexplicable advance toward the two islands.

“Here it comes!” shouted Joe suddenly, as, from the same quarter as that from which the wind had proceeded, there came a sudden, angry roar.

“Hold tight for your life!” flung back Nat over his shoulder, gripping his steering wheel with every ounce of strength he possessed.

And thus began hours of stress and turmoil, which the Motor Rangers were ever to remember as one of the most soul-racking experiences of their young lives.

CHAPTER II.

NAT TO THE RESCUE

“Wow! This is the worst ever!”

Joe was clinging tightly to the bridge of the Nomad.

Spray, flying like dust through the dense mid-afternoon twilight, stung his face. The wind whipped out his garments stiff, as if they had been made of metal, and half choked the words back down his throat.

Nat made no reply. He clung grimly to his wheel, striving with might and main to head the Nomad into the furious waves. Ding-dong Bell had emerged on deck an instant before, but had been promptly ordered below again.

“Keep your engines doused with oil; give them plenty of gasolene, and stand by for signals,” had been the young captain’s orders.

Below, beside his shining, laboring engines, Ding-dong was valorously striving to carry those orders out. But the strain on the motors was as great as they had ever been called upon to bear, even in the memorable encounter with the waterspouts.

Besides heading into the storm, Nat was “bucking” the strange current that set toward the island chasm. But powerfully as the Nomad’s propeller churned the driving seas, the unseen tide was more powerful still.

“Nat, we’re bound to be drawn into that gorge within a few minutes, unless – ”

“Unless a miracle happens.”

Joe’s comment and Nat’s rejoinder were both shouted above the storm. Their voices sounded feeble as whispers amid the fury of the conflicting elements.

Hardly a hundred yards now separated the storm-battered Nomad from the towering walls and boiling waters of the chasm. Inevitably, unless the miracle of which Nat had spoken occurred, they must, in a few moments, be laboring in the midst of that ominous-looking place. While the thought was still pulsating through their minds, and their hearts beat high with apprehension, the dreaded thing happened.

The Nomad was suddenly caught, as if by hands bent on causing her dissolution, and hurtled straight into the cleft between the islands. Nat, hardly conscious of what he was about, directed her course so that the craft was not instantaneously dashed to bits against the side of the cliffs. Joe, too alarmed to utter a word, simply clung tight to the rail. Below, in the engine-room, Ding-dong Bell was thrown from his feet and smashed up against a steel stanchion.

The blow knocked him senseless. And so, with her engineer unconscious, another member of her crew almost useless from fright, and only one guiding spirit on board her, the Nomad hastened forward into what seemed certain annihilation.

Within the cleft it was black as night. The angry seas that boiled and gnashed between the steep walls, for an instant completely hid the Nomad from view. But presently she gallantly emerged, fighting like a live thing for her life.

The wind, compressed within those narrow confines, blew with a force and fury almost incredible except to those who have passed through a South Pacific storm. It would have been impossible to cry out and make one’s voice heard. The most powerful shout would not have been audible a foot away. The situation of the Motor Rangers appeared to be almost desperate.

“Can she last out? Can she possibly stand this terrific battering?”

Such were the thoughts that galloped through Nat’s excited brain. He rang the electric signal for “more power,” but no response came from the engine-room, where Ding-dong lay senseless beside his motors.

Then he turned about to look for Joe. Now that his eyes had grown used to the darkness it was possible to see – as one sees on a night when the moon is obscured by heavy clouds. The young captain’s heart leaped into his mouth as his eyes pierced the obscurity.

Except for himself, the bridge was empty of life.

Joe Hartley had vanished!

“Swept overboard!” shot through Nat’s brain.

At the same instant he caught a cry:

“Help! Help!”

It appeared to come from far astern.

“Joe!” shouted Nat into the darkness.

“Help!” came the cry again. It was closer this time.

A coil of light but strong rope was looped to the bridge in front of Nat. Without an instant’s hesitation, he tied one end of it about his waist. He had reached a desperate determination. If he got a chance, he had made up his mind to save Joe Hartley if it were humanly possible. The other end of the coil he knew was made fast to the bridge rail, so that a final testing of the knot about his waist was all that was necessary to put his daring scheme into execution. But first Nat fixed the wheel by means of the metal grips provided for that purpose.

Then, with every nerve a-quiver, every muscle flexed, he waited for another summons. Suddenly it came.

“Help, Nat! I – ”

A smother of foam swept glimmering past the Nomad. It was luminous with phosphorescence. Amidst the greenish, ghastly glare, was plainly perceptible a darker spot. It was a human head.

“Hold on, Joe! I’ll be with you!” shouted Nat, and then, without hesitation, he mounted the bridge rail at the port side and plunged into the mass of spume.

Fortunately for those interested in the adventures of the Motor Rangers, at that instant a freak of the current spun Joe’s body about and flung him, like a bit of driftwood, toward the side of the Nomad. In a flash Nat’s strong arm was about him. It was just in time, too, for Joe, who had been swept from the bridge unseen when the Nomad encountered the angry maze of cross currents and tide rips, was almost exhausted.

In this condition he was not in full possession of his ordinary presence of mind. He clung to Nat desperately, with a grip that threatened to pull both rescuer and rescued under water together.

Nat, battling with the sharp, angry waves, as choppy and angular as giant fangs, had all he could do without struggling with Joe. Again and again he tried to break the other’s grip, but without avail. The hold of a drowning man or boy is the most tenacious known. It is almost impossible to loosen it.

“Joe, you must let go of me!” gasped out Nat.

But Joe only clung in a more leech-like fashion. What with the other lad’s dead weight clinging to him, and the conditions against which he was laboring, Nat, strong as he was, felt his strength being rapidly sapped.

Luckily, so intense had been the heat, the lads wore only light tropical trousers and sleeveless undershirts. Had they been incumbered with ordinary clothes, they could not have survived a quarter of the time that Nat and Joe did.

Nat began hauling in on his line, but with Joe gripping him so tightly, it was too much of a task.

“Joe, I hate to do it,” he said at length, “but I must, old fellow, I must!”

With these words, Nat did what he would have done with anybody else when first he realized the conditions. He struck Joe a blow on the head that completely robbed him of his senses. The lad’s vise-like grip relaxed. Under these circumstances, Nat could handle him easily.

By strong, rapid, over-hand motions, he hauled himself and his burden closer and closer to the side of the Nomad. At last they reached it. And now came the most difficult part of Nat’s enterprise. He had to get back on board, and, more than that, to get Joe there, too.

The Nomad was rolling and plunging till she was almost rail under at every roll. A sudden lurch of extra violence gave Nat his opportunity. It brought the bridge rail within reach of his free hand. He grasped it with a tenacious grip. But the next instant he was almost flung back into the sea again, as the little craft righted, and the lad, with his unconscious burden, was carried high above the boiling waters.

But Nat’s muscles had been trained to nickel steel suppleness and strength. He managed to hold on somehow, and the next roll to port of the Nomad gave him an opportunity to get one foot on the edge of the bridge. Thus he clung till the next wild roll in the opposite direction was over.

Then exerting a reserve force he had never before had occasion to bring into play, the young captain drew up Joe’s limp form and bundled it bodily within the bridge railings. This done, he clambered over himself. But he felt queer and dizzy. He could hardly keep his feet, even though he hung on to the rail. His head spun like a teetotum.

“I – why, what’s the matter with me? I – I believe I’m going to – ”

Nat did not conclude his sentence in words. Instead, he enacted it by giving a crazy plunge backward and collapsing in a heap, almost alongside the unconscious Joe.

CHAPTER III.

THE ISLANDS VANISH

Nat sat upright with a strange singing sound in his ears. It was insufferably hot. He fairly panted as he opened his eyes. The sweat ran off him in rivulets. For an instant recollection paused, and then rushed back in an overwhelming flood.

“We were in that channel between those two queer islands,” mused Nat; “and we – gracious, where are the islands?”

He had staggered dizzily to his feet and was looking about him. He knew he could not have lain senseless very long, for his garments were still wet, despite the intense heat. But the islands were nowhere to be seen.

It was still partially dark, a murky twilight replacing the former deeper blackness. But an indefinable change had taken place, somehow, in the atmosphere. Nat drew in his breath with difficulty. It seemed to scorch his lungs.

He glanced over the side of the craft and then drew back with an alarmed cry. The water all about them was bubbling and eddying furiously. A shower of spray from one of the miniature waterspouts struck Nat in the face. It was this that caused his exclamation and made him step back hastily, just as if, in fact, he had been struck a blow in the face.

The water was boiling hot!

Where it had spattered on the lad’s skin it had instantly raised blisters.

“Well, we certainly have landed in a surprising sort of fix this time,” muttered Nat to himself.

He bent over Joe. The lad had not yet regained his senses. But he was breathing heavily, and this stilled a dreaded fear, which, for a moment had almost caused Nat’s heart to stop beating.

“This air is suffocating,” gasped Nat presently. “It smells like it does when they are fumigating a room.”

He ran his tongue around his dry mouth in an effort to moisten it, for it felt parched and cracked. The reek of sulphur in the air, too, caused his throat to contract and his nose and eyes to tingle unmercifully.

But this stench also told Nat something. It furnished him with a partial explanation of the extraordinary occurrences that, as it seemed, were not yet over.

“This whole disturbance is volcanic,” reasoned the boy. “That is the cause of this awful sulphur smell. But that doesn’t account altogether for the sudden disappearance of those islands. I wonder – ” But here he broke off his meditations.

Joe was plainly in need of immediate attention, and Nat devoted his efforts to trying to raise the recumbent lad. He wanted to get him below to the cabin, where there was a well-stocked medicine chest and a supply of reasonably cool water.

But, weakened as he was, Nat couldn’t accomplish the task.

“What’s the matter with me, anyhow?” he asked himself half angrily. “This sulphur stuff must have knocked all my senses out of my head. Where’s Ding-dong, I wonder?”

He rang the engine-room call sharply. But there was no response. No Ding-dong appeared.

“Maybe the signal is out of whack,” muttered Nat, who had noticed some time before that the engine had stopped running. “Guess I’ll go below and see what’s the matter.”

It was the work of an instant to reach the hatchway leading below, and dive into the engine room. What met Nat’s eyes there made him jump almost as violently as he had when the boiling water struck him.

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as his gaze fell on the unconscious engineer, “if this isn’t worse and more of it. Poor Ding-dong is knocked out, too; cut on the head. It doesn’t seem to be a bad gash, but it has deprived him of his senses. Well, if this isn’t a fine kettle of fish! In the midst of a boiling sea with two unconscious chaps on my hands!”

Ding-dong stirred and moved uneasily as Nat examined his wound.

“Let me be!” he muttered peevishly; “lemme be.”

“That’s just what I’m not going to do,” rejoined Nat cheerfully.

On the wall of the engine room was a tap leading from the drinking water tanks of the craft. Nat saturated his handkerchief under this faucet and bathed Ding-dong’s wound. Then he applied the water plentifully to the lad’s face, and, opening his shirt, doused him with it.

Under this treatment, the unconscious lad sat up and opened his eyes.

“Hullo, Nat!” he exclaimed, like one awakening from a long sleep. “What’s up? What on earth has happened? Where are we? What makes it so hot?”

As usual, under strong excitement, Ding-dong forgot to stutter, as Joe termed it.

“I can only answer two of your questions,” replied Nat. “‘What’s up’ is that poor Joe is lying senseless on the bridge. He was washed overboard in that chasm. You’ve got to try to help me get him to the cabin. ‘What on earth has happened,’ is this: We have, apparently, passed through the chasm, and the islands have vanished in some mysterious fashion, although we can’t be far from where they were. The sea all about us is boiling hot, and I guess we are in the very core of some strange volcanic disturbance or other.”

“Cc-c-c-crickets!” sputtered Ding-dong, rising dizzily but pluckily to his feet, “we do seem to run into some mighty queer adventures, don’t we? Come on. I’ll give you a hand with poor old Joe. But, by the way, what have you been doing all this time?”

“Oh, I-I-guess I went to sleep for a while, too,” responded Nat, rather confusedly, and without mentioning his heroic rescue of Joe from the waters of the rift.