“Rot!” sneered Jack Curtiss, but his face was very pale. As for Bill Bender and Freeman Hunt, they said nothing, but watched the aeroplane soaring far above them with open mouths and staring eyes.
“Shout to him! Call to him!” raved Stonington Hunt. “Tell him there is money on board her. Don’t let him blow that schooner up. Hey-y-y-y-y!”
The distracted man, crazed by the thought of being cheated out of his golden prey at the last minute, stood erect in the boat and waved his arms frantically, but if the figure guiding the flying machine even saw him it gave no sign.
Now the aeroplane was right above the Vesper. The fascinated watchers in the boat could see the flying man’s arm move. Then, like a tiny shoe button—a little black shoe button—something dropped from the big, white airship.
“Gone! Gone!” almost shrieked Stonington Hunt, as he saw.
“Shut up, can’t you?” growled Jack Curtiss, his eyes, like those of the others, fixed upon the falling black sphere.
“Maybe it’s not a real bomb, just a practice one, and——” began Bill Bender, hopefully, when there came a shock through the air that threatened to drive their ear drums in. Sea and sky seemed to rock. Before their startled sight the old wreck rose above the surface of the water as if a giant hand had impelled her, and then settled back as slowly as a harpooned whale. The next instant an immense cloud of vapor arose and swelled to a waving, yellowish pillar in the still air. At the same moment, a mighty reverberating “boom” reached their ears. Above the destruction it had wrought the aeroplane wheeled like a phoenix.
As they gazed, its occupant waved his hand. To Stonington Hunt it seemed that it was a mocking gesture. He fairly snarled, drawing back his lips till his teeth were exposed like a wolf’s.
“Beaten again, and by blind fate, too!” he raved, tearing his hair in his extravagant fury and doing all manner of frenzied things. Even Jack Curtiss and Bill Bender were disgusted at his exhibition of childish rage, and sternly told him to control himself.
As a sort of forlorn hope the launch was run up close to where the Vesper had been last seen, but nothing remained of her but a few timbers floating around on the surface. Some of them were blackened and splintered where the cordite had riven them. The well-aimed bomb had done its work well. The hunters for Hank’s secreted loot were cheated of their treasure trove by the strangest combination of circumstances that ever frustrated a knavish plot.