Lieutenant Quentin, commander of the Watson, acknowledged his salute with due ceremony. “I have been instructed by telegraph to proceed to sea under your orders the moment you arrive, Mr. Topham,” he announced.
Topham bowed. “Very good, Mr. Quentin. Please run to the capes of the Chesapeake, keeping as far south as possible. Have your wireless ready for use as soon as we get outside the bay. Meanwhile I will go over the charts with you and lay a course.”
Down in the cabin he bent over a chart spread upon the table, and punched a small hole in it with the point of his pencil.
“The Southern Cross was here at 10 last night,” he said. “She was bound for New York, and was running presumably about twelve knots an hour.” He ruled a pencil line on the map and scaled off 220 miles along it. “She should be about here?” he decided, “at nine tonight. Twenty miles an hour would bring us to the same point at about the same hour. Therefore, Mr. Quentin, please make your course east-southeast, nothing south, as soon as we get to the capes.”
Quentin nodded and gave the orders. “Anything else, sir?” he questioned.
“Not just yet. Our errand is to find the Southern Cross and bring ashore one of her passengers. So, in good time, you can give orders to try to raise her by wireless. That’s about the only way outside of plain bull beck that we could possibly locate her tonight.”
“Right you are!” Ceremony was satisfied, and Quentin relaxed. “Say, Walter,” he exclaimed, “the Secretary must be in a horrible hurry to reach her. She’d be in New York day after tomorrow.”
“It’s the President and not the Secretary, and he is in a hurry indeed. I’m not at liberty to tell you why. The passenger—a lady—sent a wireless ashore last night, and the message reached the President this morning. The whole affair is to be kept a strict secret.”
“Of course. The lady’ll be expecting us, then?”
“I think not. I’m pretty sure not. But she’ll be glad to come, I think. She’s a newspaper woman—a Miss Lillian Byrd. You know her, don’t you?”