"I wouldn't be surprised at anything," he answered, smiling. "I've seen just as nice lookin' girls as you——"
"I'm afraid we're not very nice looking," sighed Linda, surveying their drenched, bedraggled clothing. "But we're really not boot-leggers.... We want to get back so that we can telephone to our families. They probably think that storm was the end of us."
"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't go off my course. Like to, if I had the time——"
"Well, if you can't, you can't—that's all there is to it," said Linda, philosophically. "We're glad to be alive at all, and I don't suppose a couple of days will make any difference."
"How long do you think it will take you to get to Cuba?" put in Dot anxiously. There was no use fussing, of course, but she could not forget that her mother and father would be frantic by this time.
"I'm reckonin' on dockin' at Havana the fourth of July. This is only the first, but these are stormy seas, and we have to expect delays.... Now come on inside, out o' this drizzle. You girls are drenched—I'll have to give you the only cabin I got. To get yourselves dry in."
Stooping over, he picked up Linda's tool-box, and finding it heavy, eyed it suspiciously.
"You girls gangsters?" he asked, unexpectedly. "Got any guns on you?"
Both girls felt themselves growing red at this accusation, yet they could not deny it wholly.
"That box has the tools in it which I used to fix up the engine of the motor-boat," Linda finally explained. "And you can take our word that we're not gangsters."