But just now the busy scenes that were taking place, as the steamer started off on her voyage, held his attention, and for a moment he even forgot the mysterious passenger who had gone to his cabin in such a hurry.
“Well, Tom, my boy!” exclaimed Captain Steerit, as he looked at our hero, “we’ve got good clean weather to start off with, and, if I’m any judge, it will hold for some time.”
“It isn’t so rough on the Pacific as it is on the Atlantic; is it?” asked Tom. “At least I’ve read so, and the name——”
“Don’t get that idea into your head,” laughed the commander. “The Pacific is peaceful in name only. Of course I don’t mean to say that it isn’t calm a good bit of the time, at certain seasons of the year, just as the Atlantic is. But when it wants to kick up a fuss it can make a bigger one than that ocean you’ve got back east there.
“Yes, when we get a storm out here, we certainly get a bad one. But I’m not looking for trouble. We’re going to point our nose into the nicest part of the ocean, to my thinking. You’ll enjoy it, even if you have a hard trick at the wheel ahead of you. There’ll be lots to see, especially if you go all the way to Australia with me.”
“Well, I expect to go there,” answered Tom, “for I haven’t much hope of sighting anything near the place where the wreckage was seen.”
“Nor I, either,” spoke the captain, “though I didn’t want to discourage you. The drift of the current, and the wind, wouldn’t let anything stay in one place long.”
“Then I’ll just have to go on to Sydney and start my search from there,” ventured our hero earnestly.
“Well, yes, I suppose so, though of course there’s a bare possibility that we may sight something on our way out.”