“Not much leeway for a big sailing ship,” muttered George.
“Better hugging the shore, even stormy old Hatteras, which we know something about, eh, fellows?” added Al, “than dodging subs and raiders out in the broad Atlantic.”
He had an old chart and was marking off the possible course of the Redbird with a lead pencil.
“Good work, Torry,” said Frenchy Donahue. “It’s navigation officer you’ll be next.”
They were all five deeply interested, and each day they worked out the probable course of the sailing ship, as well as figuring the distance she probably had sailed during the elapsed twenty-four hours.
“I only hope,” George Belding said, “that we overtake this Sea Pigeon and finish her before her commander takes it into his head to steam across the ocean to the western lanes of travel. If the raider should intercept father’s ship——”
“Ah, say!” cried Frenchy, “that ‘if’ is the biggest word in the language, if it has only two letters. Don’t worry, Belding.”
That advice was easy to give. George and Whistler remained very anxious, however; indeed, they could not help being. Nor did the activities aboard the destroyer during the next few days much take their thought off the Redbird and her company and cargo.
They talked but little—even to their closest boy friends—about the possibility of there being a great store of coined gold aboard the Redbird. Just the same, this fact they knew would cause the ship to be an object of keen attraction to any sea-raider who might hear of it.
The spy from the Zeppelin had secured George Belding’s letters in which the gold treasure was mentioned and Mr. Belding’s voyage in the Redbird explained. More than a month had elapsed between the spy-chase behind the little English port and the sailing of the square-rigged ship from New York for Bahia, Brazil.