“Well, look here, Tom, I will put it this way: if the storm had been yesterday, and my father and I had both been away, wouldn’t you have taken her out?”
“Well, sir, I should; I can’t say the contrary. I have always said that the boat could go anywhere, and I believe she could, and I ain’t going to back down now from my opinion; but I say as it ain’t right for you to go.”
“That is my business,” Horace said. “Marco, I am going out in the Surf to try to save some of the men on board that ship. Are you disposed to come too?”
“I will go if you go,” the Greek said slowly; “but I don’t know what your father would say.”
“He would say, if there was a chance of saving life it ought to be tried, Marco. Of course there is some danger in it, but Tom thinks she can do it, and so do I. We can’t stand here and see thirty men drowned without making an effort to save them. I have quite made up my mind to go.”
“Very well, sir, then I will go.”
Horace went back to Tom Burdett, who was talking with Dick apart from the rest.
“We will take a couple of extra hands if we can get them,” the skipper said. “We shall want to be strong-handed.”
He went to the group of fishermen and said: