"That's the kind of a man I'm pretty sure Mr. Baldwin is," nodded Halstead.
Joe surveyed a row of speaking tubes that hung against the forward wall of the captain's room. He picked out one labeled "engine-room," pressing the button beneath it.
"Hello, sir," came the quick response, in Jed Prentiss's unmistakable tones.
"Hello, Mr. Prentiss," Joe returned. "How do you like it down there, on duty?"
"It's perfect!" responded Jed, almost dreamily. "Everything here but my own personal steward. I ain't sure but what he'll blow in, in a minute, and ask me what I'll have for dinner."
"Tell him we're scheduled to start at seven," suggested Halstead.
"I can start in seven seconds, if I'm asked to," promised Prentiss. "Anyway, I can have the propellers turning fast before you can get the anchor up. Crackey! I forgot that I have to supply even the power for hoisting anchor."
Twenty minutes later the two chums, who had begun their career by patching up an old steam launch down at the mouth of the Kennebec River, in Maine, were seated at table in the captain's cabin, doing justice to a meal that was but little short of sumptuous.
The chief steward himself, a man named Parkinson, served the young captain and chief engineer. He hovered about, as attentive as any hotel waiter or private butler could have been.
It was the second steward, however, who came in with the dessert for the two chief officers of the "Panther."