“Ah, he’s safe at any rate!” gladly stated Ned. “Now we can go on and finish our voyage in peace! I’m glad he’s gone!”
“So am I!” declared Jimmie. “He’s a good fellow as one might say, but he’s too awfully stuck on getting some information for that bloomin’ Hinglish Harmy, don’t you know!”
“That’s hardly fair, Jimmie!” laughed Ned. “He didn’t drop his ‘H’s’ and he did only what he considered his duty.”
“He will probably get that fisherman to set him ashore on English soil as soon as possible,” conjectured Jack. “Suppose we follow them.”
“What for?” asked Harry. “Why should we chase after those chaps?”
“Unless we do something of the sort, we’ll have to go at it blindly!” urged Jack. “We don’t really know where we are!”
“That’s so,” admitted Harry reluctantly. “We haven’t a chart nor a course. We don’t know how far we are from anywhere at all!”
“We might keep on steering just as we started,” stated Frank. “I believe southeast was the course we used coming away from Helgoland.”
“That course would surely bring us up somewhere,” put in Ned, “but it would be much better if we could find out exactly where we are. Then we could steer a course with intelligence.”
“Aw, what do we need of a chart?” scorned Jimmie. “We know that England lies to the southwest of us. It’s big enough so we can’t miss it. If we blunder into the coast we can just cruise along a ways until we come to some place or other and then head in.”