WHAT HAVE YOU TWO been up to?” Mr. Baird asked Peter and Donald as soon as they had brought the rowboat alongside and clambered up on the deck of the “Ambassador.” He was smiling but he looked puzzled. “I thought you were asleep in your bunks and got quite a shock when I went in to call you for breakfast.”
The boys looked at each other then grinned.
“You tell!” Peter said.
“Tell what? Did you catch a fish?”
“A big fish, I’d say!” Donald said, his eyes sparkling. “It’s there, Mr. Baird! We saw the ‘Chinook’! It’s just around that point!”
“But last night you thought it was a dark boat. …”
“That’s just it. The boat in there is dark, but she was white before. They’re painting her, and they’ve changed the look of her but just the same, I’m sure she’s the ‘Chinook’!”
Mr. Baird looked thoughtful. “We don’t want to make any mistake. Do you think we should go in there and have a look?”
Donald frowned. “I’m sure about that being our ship, but I don’t know about going in there. Would they recognize the ‘Ambassador’?”
“They might, at that,” Mr. Baird said. “It’s possible they saw her anchored in Gowlland Harbor. We’d better not do anything to make the men think we’re looking for them.”
“What are we going to do?” Peter asked.
“I think we’ll just go quietly out of the Inlet until we find some way to send a message. Too bad we haven’t a ship’s telephone on board. If possible, we should get help without arousing suspicion. Did it look as if the paint job were almost done?”
“Yes, it looked that way,” Donald said. “We didn’t hang around long. Somebody came out on deck and we were afraid he would see us.”
Before starting breakfast they turned the “Ambassador” about and started off down the Inlet. The morning was perfectly calm and clear.
“As soon as we get past Hardwicke Island and into the Straits we might be able to contact a fishing boat. I don’t want to cross over to Kelsey Bay; that might give them time to slip away without us seeing them,” Mr. Baird said. John Duncanson was now at the wheel while the rest of them were hurriedly having breakfast.
Suddenly Peter stopped chewing. “S-s-s-sh! I hear something!”
“What is it?” Donald asked.
“I thought I heard a plane.” Peter swallowed a last mouthful of bread and ran up the steps to the aft deck.
“See anything?” Donald called.
Peter stuck his head in again. “Yes, a little seaplane like the one your father was in the other day, but I don’t suppose it can be the same one.”
In a moment Mr. Baird and Donald had joined him on the deck, and although the plane was some distance away they started waving frantically.
At first it didn’t seem that the seaplane pilot had noticed them, but suddenly it began to circle and drop, and landed on the water in a spume of spray. It taxied alongside and the pilot killed the engine, circled on the water and came close again. He slid open the window.
“Hello there, Baird. I recognized your boat. Any luck?”
“Thank God, it’s you, Davidson!” Mr. Baird shouted back. Then he said in a lower tone to the boys, “He’s just the one we need, has a charter water taxi service.”
“What did you say, Baird? No sign of the ‘Chinook’? We’ve been looking for a couple of days!”
“Yes, we’ve found her!” Peter and Donald shouted together. They saw a passenger in the plane lean forward and say something to the pilot. By this time the plane was some distance from the “Ambassador” but the pilot soon taxied up to them again.
“Police officer wants to come aboard,” the pilot said. “Let your dinghy down into the water.”
They did what he told them and a moment later the R.C.M.P. officer jumped in, then clambered up the side of their ship. He motioned to the plane to wait while he heard the story Peter and Donald had to tell. Then he gave his orders: the plane was to round up some boats to watch the passage out of Loughborough Inlet and he himself would stay on board the “Ambassador.” Somehow Peter and Donald felt much safer with him on board.
“Let’s go straight back to where you saw the boat!” the officer said. He told them his name was Sergeant Brown and he was from the Courtenay post of the R.C.M.P. “We’ve been searching these waters thoroughly,” he told them, “but there are hundreds of places in which a boat can hide. Even our planes didn’t report anything resembling the ‘Chinook,’ but I guess the thieves started changing her appearance right away. Of course they had a whole day to get on with their work, while Donald’s father and his crew were drifting around in the launch.”
The boys went to the back of the “Ambassador,” watching the wake of their boat. The plane had long since disappeared and there were no other boats in the Inlet. They were alone, except for the ‘Chinook’ and the men aboard her — and these men were criminals, only a short time ago behind prison bars.
“Looks as if we’re really on our own, doesn’t it?” Sergeant Brown came back to join the boys. “I told the other boats to keep out of sight during the daylight hours. My guess is that the ‘Chinook’ will try to slip down the Inlet tonight, unless of course, they have no suspicion that they’ve been spotted. They may come out any time.” Suddenly he broke off and leaned over the side to look up the Inlet. “What’s that? Do I hear something coming?”
“Must be a fishboat farther up the Inlet,” Donald said.
At last they were approaching the cove where the boys had seen the hidden boat.
“You two had better get inside,” Mr. Baird said. “If by any chance that chap did see you this morning, he might be suspicious if he sees boys on this boat. I don’t suppose they would really worry about a couple of boys, but we can’t take chances. I wonder if they will recognize the ‘Ambassador’?”
The sergeant was in the wheelhouse now so that his uniform wouldn’t give away the fact that a police sergeant was on board; Mr. Baird was at the wheel. Peter and Donald peered out a porthole. They couldn’t see much but they could hear what was going on. John Duncanson was on deck.
“The boat is still there,” he said quietly. “It has the same lines as the ‘Chinook’ right enough.”
“I’m sure the boys wouldn’t make a mistake about that,” Mr. Baird said.
The boys looked at each other and grinned.
“What do you think we’d better do? Go on past and run into Roy? There’s a settlement there. That way we wouldn’t arouse suspicion. Then we could come back and wait for them just west of the cove,” Mr. Baird suggested.
“That might be a good idea,” Sergeant Brown agreed. Suddenly he pointed, just at the same time that John Duncanson let out a warning shout.
“Look! They’re moving!”
“Swing about, Baird,” Sergeant Brown said. “We have to get below them. We’ll give them a shout and order them to stop. If they’re innocent they’ll be friendly enough!”