“Good work thar, Mister Hunt. Jes’ keep that young catamount down thar while I untangle this yar mess.”
It was Simon Lake. As he spoke, he took a megaphone from its rack just inside the companionway.
“Schooner, ahoy! What’s the trouble on board you?” came a hail from the steamer.
“Ain’t nawthin’ wrong here as I’m awares on,” hailed back Simon, his downeast drawl more pronounced than ever.
“Nothing wrong, you deep sea vagabond, then what in the name of Neptune do you mean by stopping us this way? Don’t you know we carry the mails?”
“Sorry,” shouted Simon apologetically, “but, yer see, we’ve got a kind uv a poor looney bye aboard. He thought, poor critter, it ’ud be er joke ter hail yer.”
“Oh, he did, did he?” shouted back the commander of the steamer. “Well, you’d better keep your looney under lock and key when mail boats are passing. Come ahead there.”
Deep down in the engine room of the steamer the bells jangled and she raced off once more, bound Seattleward. But as it so happened the vessel, which was the “Islander” of the Seattle-Hawaii Line, had a record for punctuality, and her slight delay following Tom’s hail was used by the captain as an excuse for some hours he had lost at sea in bad weather. It, therefore, received more space in the Seattle papers than it would have done otherwise. In fact, quite an item appeared about the “crazy boy” on board the outward-bound schooner, who had delayed the “Islander” by his antics. In course of events the paper with this news in it reached Sam Hartley.
This was two days after the “Islander” had docked. But, nothing daunted, Sam set out for Seattle that same night with the bottle-nosed man as a companion.
He was anxious to find the captain of the “Islander,” and get from him a description of that schooner. If she was the Chinese runner’s vessel, the bottle-nosed man would recognize her from the steamer skipper’s description. At least, Sam hoped so.