“What are you staring so hard at through the glasses, Jack?” asked Oscar, giving little heed to the pleasant prospect thus outlined so cheerfully by Ballyhoo, for he knew very well the other was only joking when he rattled these possible perils off so glibly.
“Why, I was watching that black steam yacht over there a mile or so away from us,” Jack remarked, lowering the marine glasses as he spoke. “I could see a fellow in some sort of uniform holding glasses on us right along. I guess he must be wondering whether we mightn’t prove to be a German submarine that had strayed across the broad Atlantic, like they threaten to do some of these fine days, to sink British munition steamships close to our shores, rather than wait for them to get over into the waters they’ve marked as the war zone.”
“I tell you what I think,” he observed a minute afterwards, “that same black steam yacht may be our rival, the Dauntless, and the man who is watching us all the while would then be that rollicking old world-wide adventurer, Captain Badger, who has sailed the Seven Seas from boyhood, been everything from blockade-runner to naval officer, and perhaps a little of a pirate on the sly besides.”
“Whew! do you really think so, Oscar?” cried Ballyhoo; “please let me have a peek at him then. I’ve heard so much about the old reprobate I’d love to say I’d actually set eyes on his phiz, even at a mile away.”
“We may see a little more of him than we want, before we’re done with this job,” Oscar told him, with the air of a prophet, but Ballyhoo only laughed, for he was not the one to cross any bridge before he came to it.
Just then Captain Barnaby Shooks, the man who had been placed in full charge of the treasure-hunting expedition by the incorporated company, came up the ladder from the conning-tower of the submarine boat. He was a grizzled old sea dog, who had seen much of life on many waters, and was well qualified to manage just such a strange mission as the one that had been placed in his hands.
He too carried a glass which he quickly focussed on the black steam yacht that was evidently capable of making much faster time than the low Argonaut, often almost awash.
“We’ve about made up our minds, Captain,” remarked Ballyhoo, who had struck up quite an intimate acquaintance with the commander, after his frank, confiding fashion, “that yonder vessel might be the Dauntless, our rival in the salvage trade. Were we right about that, sir?”
“It’s the Dauntless, sure enough,” the captain told them, “and they’re holding in as if they’d like to shadow us all the way down to where we’re going.”
“Oh! could they do that?” demanded Ballyhoo, in dismay.