"Never mind. Help me to catch that train. Burn out a boiler, if necessary, and charge it to me. I'll stand a court-martial rather than lose that train."
Within five minutes the tug was rounding the pier in front of the hotel and the Admiral was compounding a prescription which is highly esteemed at sea by elderly gentlemen who are suffering from great excitement and wet feet. Black smoke poured so densely from the boat's single funnel that a naval officer who was enjoying a brief outing at the hotel and had got out of bed early to enjoy as much as possible of it, told his wife that probably a buoy had strayed from its moorings somewhere and some sea-captain had been complaining by telegraph to the authorities at Washington.
The chase was a hard one; the train-boat had fully ten minutes the start of the tug, but the Admiral, who stood forward ready to hurry ashore, remarked that it usually took fully ten minutes to get all the passengers, luggage and freight from the boat to the train. When finally he went over the side he said:
"Charley, keep your eye on the rear platform. If I wave my handkerchief you'll know I'm safely aboard. Then wait as long as the train does; if it starts at once, steam along up the bay until you see it stop. I'll get the conductor to pull up and let us off."
"Us?"
"Yes; Jermyn and me."
It was none of the young officer's business, as he told himself, but he could not help wondering what was up between the Admiral and Jermyn. He saw the old gentleman scramble upon the rear platform of the last car, and at that very instant the train started, so the tug's nose was put up Chesapeake Bay, while her commander told himself that the chasing of a big ferry boat by a small tug was a sort of service for which boats of the lighthouse service were not designed, and that the next time the Admiral wanted anything of the sort done, and wanted a locomotive chased afterward, he hoped there would be a torpedo boat in the harbor.
Meanwhile the Admiral was making his way through the train in search of Jermyn, while the latter, moving from front to rear, was looking for Kate. The two men met suddenly in the vestibule between two cars.
"Admiral!" exclaimed Jermyn. "Are you too going to New York?"
"Not this time, dear boy. Neither are you. She's changed her mind—Miss Trewman—she's still at the hotel. Where's the conductor? Hang it, Charley will never be able to catch us if we go on at this rate. Where's the bell-rope?"