“Grandpa!”
“What?”
“The radio’s going haywire.”
The next moment, Darbee heard the thunder of ganged Libertys. He looked over his shoulder and saw the blood-red glare of their fiery exhaust. Too late, he realized, the radio signal was a trap and the black boat everyone was talking about was trying to hijack him. A big searchlight burned through the fog, passed over his low gray hull, and swooped back like a hungry sea hawk.
“Hunker down by the engine before they start shooting.”
Robin obeyed instantly. “What are you going to do, Grandpa?”
“I’m going to hope to heck he don’t spot us.”
He eased his throttle forward and picked up speed, reasoning that they wouldn’t hear him over the roar of their own engines. But suddenly their engines grew quiet. They had either slowed down to listen or shifted their engine exhausts through heavy mufflers, as he had shifted his when he entered the inlet.
The searchlight blazed back toward him. They were not making a secret of their presence, and Darbee suspected it wasn’t the fog that cleared out the cops but payoffs. Which meant he and the little girl were entirely on their own. He poured on as much speed as the Peerless would give while muffled. The searchlight swung close. He saw the glow touch Robin’s face. She looked frightened, but she was cool—one of the reasons he took her along on these jaunts.
Now they saw him.
He opened his cutouts for more speed. The Peerless roared.
Behind them the Libertys got very loud, and the big boat sprinted after him.
Robin asked again, “What are we going to do, Grandpa?”
“We’re going to run him onto Hog Island.”
“What’s Hog Island?”
“Summer resort. Dancing pavilion, restaurants, bathhouses, carnival on the boardwalk.”
She looked ahead into the empty dark, looked back at the Cyclops eye of the searchlight catching up, and looked worriedly at her grandfather. His long hair was streaming in the wind. He had one gnarly hand draped casually on the tiller. The expression on his face was weirdly serene, considering they were being chased by something scarier than cops, and she wondered, with a stab of heartbreak, Had the black boat frightened the old man out of his wits?
“I don’t see any island, Grandpa.”
“Neither does he.”
“But where is it?”
“Hurricane washed it away.”
“What hurricane, Grandpa?”
“I don’t remember—back thirty, forty years ago. Before your mother was born, if I recall.”
“Where is Hog Island now?”
“About three feet under us.”
“Oh!” she burst out in relief. He was O.K. “A sandbar! But, Grandpa, we draw almost three feet.”
“He draws five.”
At that moment, behind them, they heard the big engines stop.
“They found it!” said Darbee. He slowed down and engaged his mufflers. In the near silence, they listened to men shouting in fear and anger.
“What language is that, Grandpa?”
“Hell knows, but I can tell you what they’re yelling: We’re hard aground on a sandbar, the tide is going out, and if we don’t get off it right now we’ll be sitting ducks when the sun comes up.”
Darbee leaned on his tiller. They doubled back and listened from a distance. The black boat’s engines thundered and died, thundered and died, as they repeatedly risked their propellers trying to back her off. An engine suddenly revved so fast, it screamed.
“Busted a prop,” Darbee said cheerfully. “Or a shaft. Oops, there goes another one. He’s got one to go. Let’s hope he don’t bust that one, too.”
“Why? Let him bust all three and we’ll get out of here.”
A single engine churned cautiously, revved a little, and slowed.
“Hear that?” Darbee exulted. “He got off. Good.”
“Why good, Grandpa?”
“You just watch.”
• • •
THE BLACK BOAT limped east at ten knots.
Darbee followed. They passed Jones Inlet, but stayed in the inner passage, as he suspected they would. They did not dare go back out into the ocean with only one propeller, a propeller thumping from a bent shaft.
“Grandpa, what are we doing?”
“Gonna find out where he lives.”
“Why?”
“Why? What do you mean why? I want that boat.”
“How are we going to steal a boat from all those gangsters?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet.”
They followed for hours as it picked its way carefully through the twisty channel and finally out into South Oyster Bay and across it to Great South Bay. A dim gray dawn began to lighten the east. Soon the old man and his granddaughter could see the faintest hint of the black boat silhouetted against it.
“Where are we, Grandpa?” Robin whispered.
“Off Great River, I believe.”
“Have you figured out how we’re going to steal it?”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe Mr. Bell could help us.”
“That goody two-shoes don’t steal boats.”
“But if we did him a favor . . .”
Out of the mouths of babes, old Darbee thought. What a smart little girl she was. A chip off the old block.
“. . . maybe Mr. Bell would do one back.”
• • •
“THE METAL IS FLYING,” bellowed Ross Danis.
The big farrier had a handsome head of hair, an amiable grin, and bright eyes. Sweat glistened on his broad chest and streamed from his massive arms. Asa Somers found it hard to believe that a man could have so many muscles. He bulged like the Jack Dempsey advertisements for Nuxated Iron.
It was Babies Day at the Monmouth County Fair.
Following the baby show would be a horse show and then horse racing, which meant Danis was busy at his portable forge. Asa Somers offered to crank his bellows to keep his fire white-hot. This kept both hands free to go at it, in the farrier’s own words, “hammer and tongs,” fitting shoes, driving and clinching nails into hoofs, finishing with his rasp. It had the side advantage of keeping him talkative.
When Danis finally stopped for a swig of water, and a furtive slug from a flask, Somers showed him the worn Neverslip shoe. “Could you have put this shoe on a horse?”
“Hope not. Looks like the animal threw it, which would make me look bad.”
“He didn’t throw it.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Wall Street.”
“Never worked on Wall Street.”
“I didn’t mean you did it on Wall Street.”
“Not only did I never work on Wall Street,
