Originally published: June 5, 1909
Genres: Adventure, Children's
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199577071-motor-matt-s-submarine-or-the-strange-cruise-of-the-grampus
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49197
Chapters: 16
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
A STARTLING REPORT
There is a speed limit for automobiles in the City of New Orleans, but a certain red touring car on this Wednesday morning gave little heed to the regulation. With two wheels in the air, the car made a sharp turn into Prytania Street, slowed a little as it came within one of colliding with a two-wheeled milk wagon, swerved to one side, and then leaped onward.
Besides the driver, the car contained only one man. This passenger sat in front, leaning eagerly forward and urging the driver constantly to a faster gait.
"That's the house," said the passenger finally, indicating a building with his stubby forefinger.
The car pulled up with a jerk and the passenger was out before the machine was fairly at a stop.
"Wait for me," he called as he rushed across the sidewalk, yanked the gatebell, and then darted through and up the steps to the porch.
With savage impatience, he jabbed at the push button beside the door and tramped fretfully until a colored servant answered his summons.
"Is Cap'n Nemo, Jr. in?" he flung at the darky.
"Dat's a new one on me, boss," was the puzzled answer. "Ah dunno no sich pusson. You-all must hab got de wrong—"
"Townsend, then?" broke in the caller. "Is he here?"
"Yassuh, Mistah Townsend is in his room, sah, but dat odder man—"
Without pausing further, the man pushed roughly past the black man, to that person's intense astonishment, and went up the hall stairs three steps at a time. A moment later he had flung open a door unceremoniously.
There were two men in the room, and they started up quickly as the newcomer hurled himself in on them.
"Clackett!" exclaimed one of the men who had been in the room, facing the other with a good deal of surprise. "What's all this hurry for?"
"Sixty has sailed, cap'n!" exclaimed Clackett, dropping into a chair.
"Great guns!" gasped the third man. "Must have been kind o' sudden."
"When did he sail, Clackett?"
"Ten o'clock this morning, steamer Santa Maria, a fruiter bound for British Honduras."
"He ain't goin' to British Honduras," burst from the third man, "and don't you think it."
"I don't think so either, Cassidy," replied the captain, "but he's the fellow we were to watch, and if he's gone we've got to put out after him."
The captain looked at his watch.
"Ten-twenty," he mused, slipping the watch back into his pocket. "How did you get here, Clackett?"
"In one of them automobiles, cap'n. Street cars was too bloomin' slow."
"You're positive there's no mistake?"
"I know Jim Sixty as well as I know you, cap'n, an' I'll take my solemn Alfred it was him standin' on the Santa Maria's deck when she steamed away from the dock."
"A mistake, you know," pursued the captain, "would put us on the wrong track and cause no end of trouble."
"There ain't no mistake—take it from me."
At this, the captain became intensely alive. He whirled on Cassidy.
"You ride with Clackett in the automobile to Carrolton, Cassidy," said he briskly, "take the ferry to Westwego and bring the Grampus on the run to Stuyvesant Dock. Clackett and I will be there waiting for you."
"Tough luck," growled Cassidy, "we didn't know something about this move o' Sixty's, 'cause then we could have had the submarine handier by."
"We'll not lose much time," returned the captain. "The Grampus is all ready for a long cruise? That's the main thing."
"The boys was gettin' on the last of the stores over at Westwego," replied Cassidy.
The captain whirled on Clackett.
"The ferry from Carrolton runs on the half-hour," said he, "and if you hit up that buzz wagon you ought to get Cassidy on the ten-thirty boat. After that, rush back into town. The Snug Harbor Hotel is not far from Stuyvesant Dock. Go there, ask for Motor Matt, and bring him and his friends to the dock, prepared to make the run down the river and into the gulf with us. That will be all. Off with you, on the jump. I'll look after your luggage and mine, Cassidy."
If Cassidy was to catch the first boat from Carrolton landing there was no time for talk. With a hearty, "Ay, ay," the two men whirled from the room and rushed down the stairs. A moment later the captain, looking from a front window, saw them leap into the automobile and vanish up the street.
So far as the captain was concerned, he had plenty of time to make his preparations. It would be close to eleven o'clock before the Grampus could possibly get clear of Westwego, and possibly it would be eleven-fifteen before she would come alongside the Stuyvesant Dock.
For some time the captain had been lying ill in the Prytania Street house, but he was now rapidly recovering, and his restless, active nature welcomed this call to action. He felt that it was the one tonic he needed to bring him back to his usual form.
Cassidy was a mate of the Grampus. Ever since the captain had been stricken down the mate had been with him as watcher and nurse.
Not much time was required to get Cassidy's property into his ditty-bag, and not much more time for the captain to pack his own satchel. The colored servant had telephoned for a carriage, and the vehicle came just as the captain had finished packing.
All that remained was to settle with Mrs. Thomas, the landlady, to thank her for her kindness, and to leave for downtown.
Twenty minutes after the departure of Cassidy and Clackett the captain was speeding away in the direction of Canal Street. He halted at a bank, at the corner of Camp and Common, and drew five thousand dollars in gold. This money was given to him in a canvas bag, and, with that and his luggage, he was hurried on to Stuyvesant Dock.
As he had surmised would be the case, he was ahead of the Grampus. Gathering his goods about him, he sat down on a box near the edge of the dock and watched upstream for the first glimpse of the rounded deck, the conning tower, and the mast with the red periscope ball of the submarine.
Barely had he sighted her, cutting through the waves of the Lower Mississippi, when a quick step behind him caused him to look around.
Clackett, red-faced and perspiring, was hurrying toward him. There was a troubled, ominous look on Clackett's face.
"Where are Motor Matt and his two friends, Dick Ferral and Carl Pretzel?" cried the captain. "I need them on this cruise, and they understand the importance of their being here. Will they be along later, Clackett?"
"They'll not be along later, cap'n," answered Clackett. "You can wait for 'em as long as you please, an' the boys won't be showing up. Every minute you lose, too, the Santa Maria and Jim Sixty are gettin' farther and farther away from us."
A frown of heavy disappointment wrinkled the captain's brows.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "Motor Matt's word is as good as his bond, and he told me he'd stay in New Orleans a week and wait for me to send word to him. Where is the boy?"
"He sailed on the Santa Maria this mornin'," was the startling announcement.
The captain jumped to his feet.
"Great Scott!" he exclaimed, staring at Clackett in blank amazement.
"It's a fact, cap'n," asserted Clackett. "I got it straight from the hotel feller that seen Matt and his friends aboard the boat. There's been queer doin's, somehow."
"What do you mean by queer doings?" asked the captain sharply.
"Well, cap'n, this is the way that hotel feller handed it out to me: Ysabel Sixty, the ole filibuster's gal, called at the Snug Harbor about nine-thirty, this mornin', and had a short talk with Motor Matt. When the girl went away, Motor Matt settled his hotel bill, rounded up his friends and they all stampeded upstairs to git their baggage together. Then they flocked down and hustled for the Santa Maria. The hotel feller went with 'em, helpin' tote their traps."
The captain stared in bewilderment, his amazement growing as he listened.
"There's underhand work of some kind here," he muttered. "Motor Matt would never have gone off like that without telling me something about it."
"He tried to git you over the telephone, but the line was busy and he didn't have no time to wait."
"You saw Sixty on the Santa Maria as she drew away from the Fruit Company's dock?"
"Ay, ay, sir, as plain as I see you, this blessed minute. The girl was with him, too."
"Did you see Motor Matt and his friends?"
"I wasn't lookin' for them, particular. They might have been on the deck, cap'n, but I wouldn't swear to it. I was so jolted up by seein' Sixty pull out when we wasn't expectin' it of him, yet a while, that mebby I was excited."
The captain, greatly perturbed, tramped back and forth across the dock. He was aroused from his unpleasant reflections by the voice of Cassidy.
"All aboard, cap'n! I reckon we pulled this off in short order, hey?"
The captain whirled around. Cassidy, standing at the top of the conning tower of the Grampus, was barely head and shoulders above the level of the dock. One of the hands, on the forward part of the rounded deck, had passed a rope through a ring and was holding the submarine steady.
"Pick up the luggage, Clackett," ordered the captain, himself taking charge of the bag of gold, "and we'll get aboard."
"What you goin' to do about Motor Matt?" queried Clackett as he picked up the luggage.
"He's aboard the Santa Maria, and I am convinced that, for some cause or other, he's there through some underhand work of Sixty's. Our orders call on us to follow the Santa Maria and keep watch of Sixty. By doing that, we shall also be trailing Motor Matt and his friends. Something is bound to happen that will give us a little light on this."
Fifteen minutes later the Grampus was hustling down the river, her screw racing under the terrific impulse of the gasolene motor, and a white line of foam surging across her low deck and breaking against the base of the conning tower.
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