"Sa-ay, that's hardly fair!" came the indignant protest.
"If you want to get aboard this craft, do as we tell you," Ab Perkins retorted, doughtily.
"A-all right! I can't stay out on the ocean alone any longer, anyway!" came back the answer, with a new note of determination in it.
"Then stop talking," directed Ab, "and get down to your oars, so as to run just alongside of us. And stand by to catch the line that'll be thrown to you."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
Catching up a coil of line, Perkins ran down nearer the waist of the ship. A seaman stood by with the ship's end of a rope boarding-ladder made fast. Captain Tom remained up in the "Panther's" bow.
Then, out of the fog, shot a dory into sight. In it sat a boy of about sixteen, wearing only a ragged shirt and hardly less ragged trousers. He bent at a pair of oars, his glance cast backward over one shoulder as he guided the craft so as to pass the "Panther" without being engulfed by her.
It was close work, and required rather fine seamanship on the part of the boy in the boat.
Had the "Panther" been going at anything like her full speed the effort to lay alongside would have ended in disaster. Even as it was, Captain Tom Halstead watched with not a little anxiety.