“Not much!” The policeman was shaking his head doggedly. “Not much, you don’t. I don’t leave you out of my sight. I’ve got my orders from headquarters and——”
Howard stifled an exclamation. “Very well,” he said coldly. “As you please! Perhaps it is better anyway. Two can do things that one could not. Come! Let’s get ready.”
“But——” Dorothy looked very dubious.
Howard turned to her. “I know what you would say, Miss Fairfax. You would like to go, of course. But, believe me, it is best not. Moving about these wrecks will be difficult and even dangerous for any one hampered by skirts. You would be exhausted very soon. Besides, we may meet unpleasant sights. Later, when we know our ground better, we will take you for a sight-seeing tour. You will be perfectly safe on the Queen. You are not afraid to be left alone, are you?”
“Oh! No! It will be lonely, of course, but isn’t there some way that I can signal to you if anything should happen?”
Howard considered a while; then plunged down into the vitals of the Queen, returning shortly with a double armful of straw dug from a hogshead once filled with crockery.
“There,” he said, dropping it at the entrance of the galley. “If anything happens, wet some of that and put it on the fire; it will make a thick black smoke. By alternately closing and opening the draft, you can let it go up and cut it off altogether. We’ll watch for it.”
Howard and Jackson climbed down the Jacob’s-ladder that still swung at the Queen’s counter, and dropped lightly to the deck of the water-logged schooner that lay there. Of this, nothing but a few inches of the deck and the stumps of the masts were above water; whatever deck-houses there might have been had been carried away, together with the entire rail. Consequently there was nothing to investigate, nothing that could help the castaways in their efforts to escape, and the two men crossed over her with merely a glance, using her as a bridge to reach a ship floating high in the water just beyond.
The second vessel had a gangway lowered down her side, evidently to help her passengers to reach the boats. Her masts were gone, but otherwise she seemed intact.
“Crew and passengers taken off by another ship,” explained Howard, “probably in fair weather after a storm. Most likely another storm was brewing and the crew expected their own vessel to sink.”