“Do you think it possible they may be alive?” the captain asked.
“Yes,” declared Ned, “improbable as it seems, I feel that Bob and Jerry, as well as Professor Snodgrass, are alive. Perhaps that missing sailor is, too. They may have been cast into the sea when the derelict crashed into us, and they may have managed to keep afloat either on some of the wreckage of the Sherman that was torn off, or on a bit of the derelict. She was smashed, too, I believe. Can’t we make a search for Jerry and the others?”
“I’ll see,” said the captain. And he used his influence to such good advantage that it was soon after announced to Ned and others that before proceeding to America a search would be made by all three warships for the missing soldiers, the professor, and the sailor.
“We’s going to try to locate the derelict, too,” Ned’s captain told him. “Such craft are a terrible menace to other ships, and they are sunk wherever found. I am sorry to say no one but you seems to have much faith that we shall find your friends, but as a matter of precaution, if nothing else, a search will be made for the derelict. As she can only drift, and as Jerry and the others could only drift, in case they managed to keep afloat on some wreckage, it is possible we may find them in the vicinity of whatever vessel it was that crashed into us in the fog.”
And so the search began; a wearying and anxious search over the broad sea.
[CHAPTER XXIX]
“DERELICT AHOY!”
Ned Slade and Dr. Hallet were aboard one of the rescuing warships. There was a time, just before the wireless of the Sherman was reëstablished, when it seemed to Ned that he was going to learn Dr. Hallet’s secret, and when he felt that he could be on terms of friendship with the eccentric doctor—who was not a physician, but a doctor of science.
However, since the two had been transferred to the same warship there had been a complete change in Dr. Hallet. Far from seeking a chance to maintain friendly relations with Ned, the doctor avoided the Motor Boy and remained in seclusion. Nor did he send any word or give any explanation of what he had started to say as to his relations with Professor Snodgrass.