order to the engineer. The _Senorita_ trembled and strove, and behind her the cutter, her headway increasing, again took up the chase. "But she’s behind us now, and she may have to turn around—I couldn’t see which was her bow, she was so far away," Cliff said. "I’m half afraid we’ll show her our heels," Tom whispered. "And I’m half glad. If we can get to an island or close enough to swim to one, they can sink her and welcome!" Nicky agreed.

From the stem they watched the chase. Several shots were fired at them, but they could guess, by the diminishing light of each succeeding flash, that they were drawing away from the cutter. "But she won’t give up," Nicky proclaimed. "She will hang on like a bulldog." "I wonder why Don Ortiga doesn’t give up the run for the archipelago and stand out to sea?" Tom said.

Captain Ortiga had a different plan. He knew that the Government boat would never give up, and he wished to use that very point for his advantage. He planned to make the other boat very sure that he would continue along the Cape Sable coastline. He wished them to follow. Therefore, to the chums’ amazement, he caused the mast light to be switched on, and even reduced their speed a little, so that the cutter would pursue, but would be just out of dangerous range. "Why is he doing this?" Nicky wondered. "Let’s find out! We’re part of his crew, aren’t we? He ought to tell us."

Cliff laughed at Nicky’s assumption that they were real hi-jackers, but the trio trooped into the cabin. They found Mate Tew there, going over some of the weapons in the arsenal. "Well, my hearties!" Tew explained, "it’s this way. Don Ortiga’s got a grudge ag’inst them Government snoopers! He hates ’em!" Don Ortiga, Nicky mused, seemed to have a grudge against almost everybody—the government men, his brother—who else?

"He’s going to lure them where he can—do—what he plans—" He did not make the plan clear but the chums felt that it was a very serious danger into which their countrymen, pursuing their duty, were being led. "We’ll run up along them islands," Tew went on, "to the mouth o’ the Shark River. O’ course it ain’t rightly the mouth o’ the river, out there in them islands—it’s just a channel through ’em opposite the Shark—that’s about fifteen miles back, at the mainland edge."

"What good will that do?" Nicky inquired earnestly. "Well, we’ll have the _Senorita_ well in the mouth o’ the river, come dawn! Then we lands, see? Then we waits. O’ course they’ll run up along the islands and if they miss us, well an’ good—but if they turn and 

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