Though Tom Halstead did not tell his passengers so, he had been called a little ahead of time, just in order that he might look at the weather. Young Halstead—he was but sixteen years of age—had just come aft when he joined briefly in the conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Tremaine.
Now, after gazing to the southward some little time, he turned and went forward.
“Does look nasty, doesn’t it, Joe?” he murmured in his chum’s ear. Joe Dawson, giving the wheel a turn, nodded silently.
“I’m glad you called me, old fellow,” Tom went on.
“Nervous, old chap?” inquired Joe, glancing keenly at the skipper.
“No; not exactly,” smiled the youthful captain. “Yet, in strange waters, so full of keys and reefs, I’m not exactly fond of a storm.”
“Why not change the course, then, and go to the west of Dry Tortugas?” suggested Joe Dawson. “Then you’d have clearer water.”
“And be some hours later in reaching the river,” rejoined Halstead. “Mr. Tremaine has made it clear to me that he wants to eat breakfast on land. I don’t believe there’s much danger, anyway, in the channel between Marquesas and Dry Tortugas. The charts are rather reassuring.”
Tom sighed slightly, though there was the same cheery look in his eyes as he took the wheel from his chum.
Joe Dawson, happening to glance aft, saw a girlish figure come up out of the companionway and sink down into a deck chair beside young Mrs. Tremaine. The new arrival on deck was Ida Silsbee, a dark, really beautiful girl of nineteen, in appearance a decided contrast to blond Mrs. Tremaine. Ida Silsbee, too, was ordinarily active and energetic—another respect in which she differed radically from her friend.