A minute later he repeated it. “I’m starting the blackout again, Sidney. The first didn’t seem to work.”
Presently Dansitt’s voice reported, “It didn’t work again. I’m looking through my periscope. People on deck are standing up. Try again.”
The group in the underground laboratory stared questioningly at one another.
What was going on? Was the pulsator broken?
Suddenly Tom exclaimed, “I know what it is! Bud, we didn’t shut off the distorter on the Sea Dart! But Dansitt doesn’t realize that!”
“You mean Chilcote can’t black out the people on the freighter?” Uncle Ned cried.
“Exactly.”
Suddenly a string of expletives came over the loud-speaker and Tom quickly shut it off.
198 TOM SWIFT AND HIS JETMARINE
“They’ll probably be back here right away,” he stated. “We must work fast.”
“We’ll be ready for them,” Bud said.
“Right. Chilcote will be here first. Come on, let’s go topside,” Tom suggested.
Uncle Ned, who had seen more of the pirates’ hideout than the others, led them through a passageway and out into the sunlight of the island. Everyone took deep breaths of fresh air, then Tom explained a plan for the capture.
“Bud and I will cross over the channel to the airstrip and intercept Chilcote.”
“Yes.” Bud grinned. “That pirate’s going to need a really big black patch on his eye when I get through with him!”
He spied a rowboat on the other side of the channel and offered to get it.
“Just call me a Labrador retriever,” he said, dashing to the water.
He took off his shoes and swam to the other side. Five minutes later he was back with the rowboat. Tom advised the others to hide in a fisherman’s shack which stood nearby. When they were out of sight, he and Bud stepped into the boat and rowed to the opposite shore. There they hid among some scrubby bushes.