“In all this storm?” cried Madame Androletti, in some alarm.
“Oh, this isn’t bad,” laughed Larry. And yet, as he mounted the companion stairway, and had to hold tightly to the rail, so as not to be pitched down on his head, he realized that the storm was rapidly getting worse.
“But I guess Miss Elizabeth is a plucky enough girl to weather it,” thought Larry grimly. “She will if she’s anything like our friend Grace,” and he looked back into the cabin to see the millionaire’s daughter, with her arms about Madame Androletti, trying to comfort her, and allay the fears of the singer.
Once on deck, though the wind blew with considerable force, it was not quite as bad as Larry had feared. True, there was a heavy sea on, and to those who have never seen the Great Lakes in a storm, let me tell you that a blow there can raise almost as high waves as on the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. The Great Lakes are lakes only in name—they are really inland seas.
“Here we are, Larry!” called Mr. Potter, as our hero started toward the bridge. The young reporter turned to behold, in the glare of a storm lantern, the millionaire and the captain examining the end of the severed cable. The first mate was on the bridge, or what corresponded to it, steering the vessel.
“It’s cut, all right,” said Captain Reardon, as he handed the end of the cable to Larry. “And it was no accident, either.”
“How do you make that out?” asked Mr. Potter.
“Because that’s been done with a knife. See how clean the cut is. Of course the sharp prow of another vessel, moving at great speed, might do it, but I don’t think it did. If a vessel had come near enough to us to do that we’d have heard it. The man on watch didn’t report a thing, though.”
“Then how could it have been done?” asked the millionaire.
“Some one sneaked up in a small boat, and used a knife or hatchet,” replied the captain decidedly.