“Look right over there to the north-westward, sir, and you’ll make out that drab-hulled seventy-footer. She’s just coming into sight.”
“I see her,” nodded Mr. Seaton.
Captain Halstead took the glasses again, studying both the seventy-footer and the freighter intently, judging their relative speeds and positions.
“Dalton, or his friend, Lemly, has nicely calculated the drab boat’s run,” declared the young skipper of the “Restless,” “Dalton’s craft is in fine position to stop the freighter. But we’ll reach the ‘Fulton’ first, and by some minutes, too, sir. The drab boat looks like a good one, but I believe we’re a shade faster in the stretch.”
“What are we going to do when we overhaul both craft?” wondered Powell Seaton, aloud.
“Why, sir, it will be easy enough to make the ‘Fulton’s’ captain refuse to take any such passenger as Dalton.”
“How?” demanded Mr. Seaton.
“Just inform the ‘Fulton’s’ captain that Anson Dalton is a fugitive from justice. If you do that, the freighter’s captain isn’t going to take any chances on getting into subsequent trouble with Uncle Sam. The captain will simply decline to receive him as a passenger on the high seas.” 126
Powell Seaton looked very cheerful for a moment. Then a look of dark doubt crossed his face.
“That will be all right, Halstead, unless it happens that the captain of the ‘Fulton’ is a man on the inside of some official affairs down in Brazil. If that be so, then your freighter’s captain may recognize Dalton as a man of consequence—one to be served at all hazards. For, if a steamship captain of the Langley line must be careful to stand well with the United States authorities, he must also be no less careful to keep in the good graces of some of the cliques of Brazilian officers. So what if Dalton goes aboard the freighter, and her captain sends us a derisive toot of his whistle?”