“Do? I am going to get up the anchor and get after the Fox instanter. I’ll catch her if I have to chase her around Cape Horn!”
“That’s the Fox sure enough, Frank,” declared Bart Hodge, who had been watching the distant sail for some time.
It was three days after the night of the storm, and the Greyhound had entered the Santa Barbara Channel.
In all that time they had not sighted the yacht they were pursuing, although they heard of her several times from vessels they had spoken.
With bulldog tenacity Frank had continued in pursuit of Lord Stanford’s boat, and now, at last, he was rewarded by sighting her in the distance.
A steady breeze was blowing from the northwest, and the Greyhound was carrying every stitch of canvas with which she was provided.
“She does not seem to be heading for Santa Barbara, if I am right in my reckoning,” said Merriwell, in a puzzled way. “She should be setting her course southeast and she is bearing directly south. I wonder where Stanford is taking Inza and her father? I really do not understand it.”
The others were unable to offer a solution for the Englishman’s peculiar behavior.
Both boats were running almost dead before the wind, and the Greyhound was able to spread the most canvas, so she gained steadily on the other yacht.
Within an hour she was quite near the Fox, which seemed to be heading for a wooded island that lay straight ahead.