The
SHADOW PASSES

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

COPYRIGHT 1938
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Silver Fox 11

II Blackie’s Story 32

III Fat and Furious 38

IV The Capture of Old Silver 53

V Johnny Fights for Fun 68

VI Smokey Joe’s Blue Bears 77

VII A Strange Battle 85

VIII The Stormy Petrel’s First Prize 98

IX Fate Lends a Hand 103

X A New World 111

XI The Fall of Red McGee 119

XII A Ptarmigan Feast 128

XIII The Shadow 141

XIV A Voice in the Fog 147

XV A Roar from the Deep 158

XVI Looming Peril 166

XVII Trapped 174

XVIII Five Rounds and a Friend 181

XIX Ordered Below 189

XX A Battle in the Dark 194

XXI Wall of Glass 201

XXII Dreams 209

XXIII In the Blue Bear’s Cave 216

XXIV Overtaking a Shadow 225

XXV “Bill” Returns 233

THE SHADOW PASSES

CHAPTER I
THE SILVER FOX

“And then I saw it—the Shadow.”

The speaker’s eyes appeared to snap. Johnny Thompson leaned forward in his chair. “It glided through the fog without a sound.” The voice droned on, “Not a sound, mind you! We had a small boat with powerful motors. I stepped on the gas. Our motors roared. We were after that shadow.”

“And then?” Johnny Thompson whispered.

“For all I know,” the black-eyed man murmured, leaning back in his chair, “we might have cut that shadow square in two. Anyway, that’s the last we saw of it for that day.

“But think of it!” he exclaimed after a second’s pause. ”Think of the thing just disappearing in the fog like that!”

He was a romantic figure, this man Blackie. The boys of Matanuska Valley in Alaska loved this gathering of an evening about the red-hot stove in the store. And no part of the evening’s entertainment was ever half so thrilling as Blackie’s stories.

“It was spring then,” Blackie added, “late May, when the salmon run was on.”

“It was a whale after salmon, that shadow,” someone suggested.

“No, sir!” Blackie fairly shouted. “It was too fast for a whale! Some sort of Oriental craft, I shouldn’t wonder. Though how they’d make it go without a sound is beyond me.

“Ah well,” he sighed, “I’ll be rid of these by spring.” He kicked at the crutches beside his chair. “Then I’ll be after ’em again, those bloomin’ Orientals and their gliding shadows.”

“You going back into the Coast Guard Service?” Johnny asked eagerly.

“I sure am!” Blackie agreed heartily. “Boy! That’s the life! A speedy boat with two or three airplane motors in her hull, a good crew, plenty of gas, the wide open sea and enough trouble to keep your eyes open day and night. Man! Oh, man!”

“Take me along,” Johnny suggested impulsively.

“Me too!” put in Lawrence, his slim, bright-eyed cousin.

“What do you know about boats?” Blackie asked.

“Plenty,” was Johnny’s prompt reply. “Been on ’em all my life, power boats on the Great Lakes, Carib Indian sailboats in the Caribbean, skin-boats way up north. It’s all the same.

“And Lawrence here,” he added after a brief pause, “he knows about motors.”

“I—I was assistant mechanic in an airplane hangar for a season,” Lawrence agreed modestly.

“Well, it—might—be—arranged,” Blackie replied slowly. “Don’t know about pay. You sort of have to be on regular for that. But up here in the north, things can’t always be done according to department