CHAPTER I
TOM HALSTEAD, KNIGHT OF THE OVERLAND MAIL
"I feel it in my bones," announced Joe Dawson, quietly though positively.
"That's no talk for an engineer," jibed Tom Halstead. "Tell me, instead, that you read it in your gauge."
"Oh, laugh, if you want to," nodded Dawson, showing no offense. "But you'll find that I'm right. You know, I don't often make predictions."
"Yet, this time, you feel that something disastrous is going to happen before this train rolls out on the mole at Oakland? In other words, before we set foot in San Francisco?"
"No, I don't say quite that," objected Joe, thoughtfully. "There's a heap of the navigator about you, Tom Halstead, and you're pinning me down to the map and the chronometer. I won't predict quite as closely as that. But, either before we reach 'Frisco, or mighty soon after we get there, something is going to happen."
"And it's going to be a disaster?" questioned Tom, closely.
"For someone, yes; and we're going to be in it, at great risk."
"Well, it's a comfort to have it narrowed down even as closely as that," smiled Tom Halstead. "I hope it isn't going to be another earthquake, though."
"No," agreed Joe, thoughtfully.
"Oh, well, that much of your prediction will comfort the people of San Francisco, anyway."
"Now, you're laughing at me again," grinned Joe, good-naturedly.
"No; I'm not," protested Halstead, but belied himself by the twinkle in his eyes, and by whistling softly the air of a popular song that the boys had heard in a New York theatre just before leaving for the West.
At the present moment both boys were sitting comfortably facing each other in their section in a sleeping car on the luxurious Overland Mail. It was early forenoon. They had left Sacramento behind some time before, on the last stretch of the run across the state of California.
Joe Dawson was riding facing forward. Tom Halstead, in the seat opposite, half lolled at the window-ledge, with his back toward the engine. Both boys had slept well on their last night out from San Francisco. Both had breakfasted heartily, that morning, in the dining car now left behind at the state capital. The next thing that would interest them, so far as they could now guess, would be their arrival at Oakland, and the subsequent ferry trip that would land them in San Francisco.
It may seem a curious fact to the reader, but neither Tom Halstead nor Joe Dawson knew just what new phases of life awaited them in the City by the Golden Gate. They were engaged to enter the employment of a man who owned a motor yacht. The owner had agreed to their own terms in the way of salary, and he was paying all their expenses on this luxurious trip westward. Moreover, the same owner had engaged some of the other members of the Motor Boat Club of the Kennebec, as will soon be told.
Readers of the preceding volumes of this series are already well acquainted with bright, energetic, loyal and capable Tom Halstead, who, from the start, had held the post of fleet captain of the Motor Boat Club. The same readers are equally familiar with the career of Joe Dawson, fleet engineer of the Club.
As narrated in "The Motor Boat Club of the Kennebec," Tom and Joe were two boys of seafaring stock, and natives of Maine, having been born near the mouth of the Kennebec River. That first volume detailed how the two young men served aboard the "Sunbeam," the motor yacht of a Boston broker, and how the boys aided the Government officers in solving the mystery of Smugglers' Island. Out of those adventures arose the founding of the Club, with Tom and Joe at its head.
In "The Motor Boat Club at Nantucket" the two boys were again seen to great advantage. There they had some most lively sea adventures, all centering around the abduction of the Dunstan heir. Next, as told in "The Motor Boat Club off Long Island," the motor boat boys played an exciting part in the balking of a great Wall Street conspiracy. In recognition of their services at this time, the man whom they most helped presented them with a fifty-five foot cruising motor boat, which the two proud young owners named the "Restless." Afterwards they installed a wireless telegraph apparatus on the boat, and then came one of their truly famous cruises, as related in "The Motor Boat Club and the Wireless," wherein wireless telegraphy was employed in ferreting out one of the great mysteries of the sea.
"The Motor Boat Club in Florida" described the sea wanderings of Captain Tom and Engineer Joe in the Gulf waters, and their subsequent adventures in the Everglades and at Tampa, including the laying of the Ghost of Alligator Swamp.
From time to time other seafaring boys, whose experience aboard motor yachts qualified them, were elected members of the Motor Boat Club, an organization which now boasted some forty members along the Atlantic seaboard. Several of these boys had made themselves barely less famous than had Halstead and Dawson.
Broker George Prescott, of Boston, their first employer and founder of the Club, was still their staunch friend. So, too, in scarcely less degree, was Francis Delavan, a Wall Street financier to whom Tom and Joe had rendered most valuable services.
