MOTOR STORIES

Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1909, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y.

MOTOR MATT MAKES GOOD

OR,

ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE MOTOR BOYS.

By the author of "MOTOR MATT."

CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN THIS STORY.

Matt King, otherwise Motor Matt, king of the motor boys. Carl Pretzel, a cheerful and rollicking German boy, stout of frame as well as of heart, who is led by a fortunate accident to link his fortunes with those of Motor Matt. Dick Ferral, a young sea dog from Canada, with all a sailor's superstitions, but in spite of all that a royal chum, ready to stand by the friend of his choice through thick and thin. Ensign John Henry Glennie, United States Navy. Sons of the Rising Sun. Captain Pons, who has come from Havre, France, to deliver the submarine boat, Pom, to the Chilian Government, only to fall into a net spread by the Sons of the Rising Sun. Captain Sandoval, of the Chilian Navy, who has appeared before, in the Motor Stories, and appears for the last time and bows himself out. Captain of the Port of Lota, Chili, who plays a small but important part.

CHAPTER I.

OFF THE CHILIAN COAST.

"Great spark plugs!"

"Strike me lucky!"

"Py shiminy Grismus!"

There were three surprised and excited boys on the rounded deck of the submarine boat Grampus. It was a calm, cloudless night, and the sea was as smooth as a mill pond; but, for all that, the night was cloudless, a dank, clinging fog had rolled down from the Andes and out upon the ocean, blotting out moon and star and rendering their surroundings as black as Erebus.

The Grampus was proceeding slowly northward along the Chilian coast. Motor Matt, Dick Ferral, and Carl Pretzel were on the deck forward, keeping a sharp lookout. The electric projector from the conning tower bored a gleaming hole into the darkness ahead, giving the lads a limited view in that direction. Speake was half in and half out of the conning tower, steering from that position.

The waters gurgled and lapped at the rounded sides of the boat, then floated rearward in long lines of phosphorescence, spreading out in the wake like two sticks of an open fan. At the stern of the submarine the propeller churned up a glittering froth.

What the boys saw, however, that had aroused their startled exclamations was a cluster as of glowing lights a foot or two under the surface of the water. This mysterious glow was moving, at a moderate rate of speed, in a course that crossed that of the Grampus.

"Slow down, Speake!" called Matt to the helmsman.

The jingle of a bell, down in the motor room, was heard faintly, and the submarine's speed fell off perceptibly. The cluster of starlike points bubbled onward, missed the bow of the Grampus by a few feet, and vanished in the gloom on the port side.

"Vat it iss?" murmured Carl, rubbing a hand dazedly across his eyes. "Dere iss lighdning pugs on der land, und I vonder iss dere lighdning pug fishes in der sea? Dot looked schust like a shark mit some search lights on his headt."

"I'm a Fiji if there was any fish about that," averred the bewildered Dick. "Can you rise to it, matey?" he[Pg 2] asked, turning to Matt. "What sort of a sizing do you give it?"

The king of the motor boys was puzzled.

"It might be a piece of drift from the shore," he answered, "or the fragment of a wreck."

"Aber it moofed!" exclaimed Carl. "It moofed droo der vater schust like it vas alife!"

"The current may have caused that. There are all kinds of currents in this part of the ocean."

"Und der lights, Matt. Pieces oof wreck don'd haf lights like dot!"

"That was a trick of the phosphorescence. There were probably nails or spikes in the timber, and wherever they projected and caused a ripple there was a glow in the water."

Matt turned to Speake.

"Make a turn to the left, Speake," said he. The submarine swerved slowly to the port tack. "There," said Matt; "hold her so."

Dick gave a low laugh.

"You don't take much stock in that explanation of yours, matey," he remarked, "or you wouldn't be following that bit of supposed flotsam and jetsam."

"I've explained it in the only way I know how, Dick," returned Matt, "but I'm still a good deal in doubt. We'll see if we can overhaul the thing and make a further examination. I don't like to take the time, but it may turn out to be time well spent."

Motor Matt knelt well forward, just where the V-shaped waves parted over the sharp nose of the Grampus, and while he knelt he peered fixedly into the water ahead.

"You're such a cautious chap," spoke up Dick, hanging to one of the flagstaff guys and likewise staring ahead, "that I've been all ahoo wondering why you were doing this night cruising. The night's as black as a pocket, and this coast is about as dangerous as you can find anywhere, and yet here we are, groping our way along, never knowing what minute we may bounce upon a reef or say how do you do to a sharp rock."

"Remember that Pacific Mail boat we spoke yesterday?" inquired Matt, over his shoulder.

"The one that told us they had news, in Santiago, that a Japanese boat had got away from the Chilian, Captain Sandoval, below the Strait of Magellan?" responded Dick.

"Exactly. When we left English Reach, at the western end of the strait, we know Captain Sandoval, of the Chilian warship Salvadore, was pursuing the mysterious Japanese steamer; and we also know that that steamer had on board our enemies, the Sons of the Rising Sun. The mail boat said the news that the steamer had escaped the Salvadore had been flashed by wireless from Punta Arenas, and had been repeated by telegraph to Santiago and Valparaiso."

"I don'd pelieve dot Chap poat efer got avay from der Salvatore!" declared Carl.

"It may be that she did, Carl," went on Matt, "and we've got to make sure of it just as soon as we possibly can. That's the reason we're traveling through this thick fog, and taking our chances on hitting a reef or sunken rock. We've got to reach Lota and find out for sure if those Japs are again free to bother us. You know what it means if the Sons of the Rising Sun got away from Sandoval. Those misguided Japs have sworn that the Grampus shall never be turned over to the United States Government at Mare Island Navy Yard. They're a desperate and fanatical lot, and we've got to know just what we're up against, so far as they are concerned. Lota is on the railroad and telegraph line, and we'll get news there, if anywhere."

"As usual," observed Dick, "that head of yours has been working, old ship, while the rest of us have been wondering what you were trying to do. I don't think you'll catch up with that piece of drift."

"Nor I," Matt answered, getting to his feet and coming aft. "Whatever that was, I suspect we'll never be able to discover, so my guess will have to stand. Put her on the starboard tack, Speake," he added to the man in the conning tower.

The submarine once more resumed her course toward Arauco Bay and Lota.

"You fellows go below and turn in," Matt went on to Dick and Carl. "I can con the ship, all right, and there's no need of the two of you staying awake and helping me on the lookout."

"You'd better let Glennie relieve you, mate," suggested Dick. "You've been on deck duty for six hours."

"I'm going to stay right here," said Matt, "until we get safely into Arauco Bay."

There was no use arguing with Motor Matt when he made up his mind that duty commanded him to do a certain thing, and Dick and Carl wished him luck and went below.

Ensign Glennie was lying on the locker in the periscope room.

"You shifted the course," said he, rising on one elbow and peering at Dick and Carl as they dropped off the iron ladder. "What was up?"

"Somet'ing mit a shiny headt vent past us," replied Carl, dropping down on a stool and beginning to draw off his shoes.

"Something with a shiny head?" queried the nonplused ensign.

"Yah, so. It vas a funny pitzness."

"What was it, Dick?"

"I'm by," answered Dick, shaking his head. "I've seen a good many queer things afloat, but that was the queerest. It was too dark to see much, though. Mayhap if we'd had a little more light, we could have made a closer examination and the mystery would have been explained."

Thereupon he went into details, telling Glennie all that he and Carl knew.

"Can you make anything out of it, Glennie?" Dick finished.

"I'm over my head, like the rest of you," answered the ensign. "Probably Matt hit it off pretty well when he said it was a bit of water-logged drift, floating between two waves, with spikes cutting the water and throwing off gleams of phosphorescence. This part of the Pacific is full of cross-currents. And it's a mighty dangerous stretch of water, too, I'm telling you. Matt is certainly anxious to reach Lota, or he'd never persist in pushing through waters like these in such a fog."

"He's worrying again over those Sons of the Rising Sun."

Dick pulled off one of his shoes and swung it reflectively in his hand.

"I don't think it is possible that that Jap steamer got away from Sandoval," said Glennie. "The officers on that mail boat must have got it wrong."

[Pg 3]

"Our old raggie is bound to find out just how much truth there is in the yarn, anyhow," continued Dick. "We're what you might call on the last leg of our cruise, and the little old Grampus has covered the east coast of two continents and is well up the west coast. We have dodged trouble in pretty good shape, so far, and Matt don't intend to let the Sons of the Rising Sun put us down and out at this late stage of the game."

"The Japs can't put Motor Matt down and out," averred Glennie, with suppressed admiration. "He has met them at every point, and has given them the worst of it. They'll never be able to destroy the Grampus. Mark what I say, my lads, Motor Matt is going to 'make good' with ground to spare, and chalk up another victory for the motor boys."

Dick and Carl would have cheered this warm sentiment, but before they had a chance to do so, a wild yell came from Speake.

"Tumble up here, you fellows! Quick, now!"

Speake, as he spoke, crushed himself against the side of the conning-tower hatch, in order to make room for those in the periscope room to pass him and reach the deck.

Startled by the words and wildly excited manner of the helmsman, Dick, Carl, and Glennie lost not an instant in rushing up the ladder and dropping over the side of the conning tower.

"Where's Matt?" cried Dick.

"That's just what I want to know," answered Speake, his consternation growing and a tremulous awe finding its way into his voice. "He was on the deck a few minutes ago, but he isn't here now. The last I saw of him he went aft, around the conning tower. The next thing I knew, when I turned and looked for him, he wasn't aboard."

All three of the lads were stricken dumb. For a brief space none of them spoke, but looked toward each other in the gloom, frantically alarmed and vaguely fearing—they knew not what.

"He couldn't have fallen overboard," spoke up Glennie, first to break the silence that held them as by an uncanny spell, "and yet it's certain he's not on the boat."

"Matt!" roared Dick, making a trumpet of his hands and calling into the blank darkness. "Ahoy, Matt!"

No answer was returned. All that could be heard was the hum of the submarine's motor, the swish of the propeller, and the lap and gurgle of waves along the rounded side.

Carl began to whimper.

"Ach, du lieber! Oof anyt'ing has habbened py dot bard oof mine, I don'd know vat I shall do, py shinks! He vas der pest friendt vat I efer hat, und——"

"Put about, Speake!" cried Dick, now thoroughly alive to the situation. "If Matt went overboard, then we're rushing away from him, and he's swimming somewhere in our wake."

The shaken helmsman immediately turned the Grampus in a wide circle and rang for full speed.

CHAPTER II.

HURLED INTO THE SEA.

Matt was very much worried when Dick and Carl, agreeably to their orders, went below. It was not the strange visitor that had passed the bows of the Grampus on its glowing way that rested heavily on his mind, but the news gathered from the captain of the mail boat that had been spoken early in the day.

On leaving the western end of the Strait of Magellan, the submarine and her crew had, as they supposed, left behind them for the rest of their cruise their wily enemies, the Sons of the Rising Sun. They had had trouble enough on account of the Japanese while coming through the strait, and Matt thought that he and his friends were entitled to a respite, so far as the nefarious plots of the fanatical young Japs were concerned.[A]

[A] The adventures of the motor boys, in and around Magellan Strait, were set forth in No. 19 of the Motor Stories, entitled, "Motor Matt's Defiance; or, Around the Horn."

It was the responsibility for the safety of the Grampus that rested so heavily on the young motorist's mind. Weeks before, when the submarine had left Belize, British Honduras, Captain Nemo, Jr., the owner of the boat, had placed the craft entirely in Matt's hands.

"I wouldn't trust the Grampus with any one else, Matt," declared the captain. "But you've got nerve, your judgment is good, you know the craft from one end to the other, and whenever anything goes wrong and you get into a scrape, you've got a knack of always getting out of it without much damage to yourself. A hundred thousand dollars is to be paid for the Grampus when she reaches Mare Island. If the submarine doesn't reach there in good condition, the money will not be paid. Sickness will detain me for a while in Belize, and so that puts this work of taking the boat around the Horn up to you. Now go ahead!"

Motor Matt appreciated to the full Captain Nemo, Jr.'s trust and confidence. He had vowed to himself over and over again that he would prove to the captain he was worthy of the trust reposed in him. Matt was thinking of all this on the deck of the Grampus, after Dick and Carl had left him; and, in the midst of his reflection, he fancied he heard a muffled sound from somewhere in the submarine's wake.

Instantly alarmed, he passed the conning tower, without exchanging any words with Speake, and took up a position not far from the churning propeller. But he heard nothing further, and could see nothing either to increase or diminish his fears. He was just turning about to make his way forward, when a coil struck about his throat, drawing taut on the instant and preventing any outcry. At the same instant there came an irresistible pull backward.

Matt, astounded by this unexpected attack, reaching him from some point away from the boat and darting silently and suddenly out of the thick gloom, flung up his hands in an attempt to clutch one of the wire guys of the periscope mast.

He missed the guy by a fraction of an inch, slipped downward over the rounded deck and rolled into the water. He made little noise, so little that Speake could not hear it above the swirl of waves thrown up by the rounded plates of the Grampus.

Another moment and Matt was in the water and swimming. The deadly compression at his throat continued, and he was unable to voice a sound. He could see the little search light of the submarine moving rapidly onward into the darkness, and could see the half of Speake's form, like a blot of shadow, rearing out of the tower hatch.

[Pg 4]

All this time Matt felt the pull of the rope about his neck, drawing him steadily and remorselessly away into the foggy night. No one spoke behind him, and there was not the slightest sound to tell him who his captors were, or where they were, or how they had succeeded in making him a victim in that mysterious fashion.

A minute, two minutes, passed. At the end of that time Matt felt his strength leaving him because of the strangling grip about his throat. Then, suddenly, the rearward "pull" relaxed and the constriction at his throat ceased. With one hand he reached upward and pulled the strangling coil loose and gulped down a deep draught of air.

A moment later he gave vent to a cry, hoping to attract the attention of Speake. But the Grampus was too far away. With difficulty Matt freed himself of his shoes and coat. He had no idea how long he would have to swim, but he prepared himself to keep afloat as long as possible. What the end was to be he did not know, and he had no time to give to that phase of the question.

Some mysterious force had hurled him from the deck of the Grampus into the sea, and perhaps this same force would continue to take care of him. Turning about in the water, he lifted himself high with a downward stroke of his powerful arms, and peered in the direction from which the attack had come. He could see nothing and could hear nothing.

For a moment Motor Matt was tempted to forget his dire plight in marveling over the mysterious nature of that attack. The next instant, however, he began asking himself if it would be possible to reach the Chilian shore. It was a mile away, at least. To swim such a distance was no very extraordinary feat, but there were currents sucking Matt oceanward, and against these it was powerless for him to struggle.

Matt could keep afloat, but to what purpose? Would it be possible for him to keep on the surface until his friends on the submarine discovered his absence and put back to his rescue? Even if he could swim for that length of time, could his friends find him in that darkness, with the current dragging him farther and farther from the course over which the Grampus had recently passed?

In Motor Matt's place, a good many lads would have given up the struggle, but Matt was of different calibre. As long as there was a breath in his body he would fight, for he knew that while there is life there is always hope.

Blindly and doggedly he continued his battle with the waves, peering into the northeast from time to time, in the hope of seeing the search light of the Grampus. He did not see the search light, but he saw something else lying sluggishly in the water not a great distance from where he was.

"A log!" he thought.

Under the impression that fate had thrown across his path a bit of drift from the mainland, he swam to the object and laid hold of it as it heaved and ducked on the placid waves.

It was not a log. As he put out one hand it came in contact with smooth, wet metal. The object was a long cylinder, blunt at one end and pointed at the other.

"A torpedo!" ran his thought, as he hung over the rounded object with one arm and supported himself in the water. "Who fired the torpedo?" was the question he asked himself.

He had leisure now for a little reflection. No strength was required to keep himself afloat, for the steel cylinder supported him.

As he hung there, lifting and falling with the long, deadly tube, his thoughts harked back to the queer object he, and Dick, and Carl had seen in the water. The result of his reflections paralyzed him.

Some mysterious enemy had launched the torpedo at the Grampus!

Had the infernal machine struck the submarine, the craft and every one aboard would have been torn to pieces.

A slow horror pulsed through Motor Matt's veins.

The same enemies who had launched the torpedo must surely have jerked Matt from the deck of the submarine. But who were they? where were they?

With difficulty he lifted himself and got astride the rolling cylinder. From that elevated position he looked around him into the darkness. Silence reigned in every direction. There was no sign of the mysterious foes who had attempted to destroy the Grampus and to make a prisoner of her commanding officer.

Presently the young motorist became conscious that the coil was still about his throat, and that a long object was trailing downward and hanging with some weight from his neck.