“I wish I might,” answered Ordway.
Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when the click and the springing beam sent my heart into my mouth. Dorothy and Tom sprang for paper and their data. Ordway looked on in amazement.
“What’s up, Orrington?” he asked. “What did the thing stop for?”
“Another ship has gone down,” I answered; “but of what nation I know no more than you.”
We waited silently till the computation was ended. Dorothy looked up with knotted brow. “I make it Portsmouth again. Do you, Tom?”
“So do I,” said Tom. “There must be some mistake. Let’s go over the figures again.”
Again they obtained the same result, and an hour passed before they gave up searching for possible errors.
“What are you going to do about it, Orrington?” asked Ordway finally.
“I’m not going to do anything. It must be a mistake.”