“I think if you would tell me who the boy is, and why the danger threatens him, I might help you more wisely.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Mrs. Knapp thoughtfully. “You shall know before it is necessary to make our next plans.”
And then the boy called for her attention and I returned to the deck.
The light of the morning was growing. Vessels were moving. The whistles of the ferry-boats, as they gave warning of their way through the mist, rose shrill on the air. The waters were still, a faint ripple showing in strange contrast to the scene of last night.
“There's a steamer behind us,” said Dicky Nahl, with a worried look as I joined him. “I've been listening to it for five minutes.”
“It's a tug,” said the captain. “She was lying on the other side of the wharf last night.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Put on full steam, then, or we shall be run down in the bay. It's the gang we are trying to get away from.”
The captain looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and was inclined to resent my interference. Then he shrugged his shoulders as though it was none of his business whether we were lunatics or not so long as we paid for the privilege, and rang the engine bell for full speed ahead.
We had just come out of the Oakland Creek channel and the mist suddenly thinned before us. It left the bay and the city fair and wholesome in the gray light, as though the storm had washed the grime and foulness from air and earth and renewed the freshness of life. The clear outline of the hills was scarcely broken by smoke. The ever-changing beauties of the most beautiful of bays took on the faint suggestion of a livelier tint, the herald of the coming sun. We had come but a few hundred yards into the clear air when out of the mist bank behind us shot another tug, the smoke streaming from the funnel, the steam puffing noisily from the escapes and the engine straining to increase the speed.
At the exclamation that broke from us, our captain for the first time showed interest in the speed of his boat, and whistled angrily down to his engineer.