"Kin cook! kin wash! kin sing! kin dance! an'——"
"Can't keep quiet," said Jeff in a jocular undertone to Tom, "he's a West Indian, and faithful as a spaniel dog."
And in this way, Rosewater—they never heard of any other name for him, even the negro did not know of one himself—became a member of the Sea Ranger's crew on one of the most adventurous cruises any of the party had ever embarked upon.
Half an hour after the doctor had patched up the professor, and had left the craft, the engines, under Tom's management, began to revolve.
With Jeff—a skilful steersman—at the wheel, the professor "standing by," and Rosewater in the galley, they glided out of the harbor of Rockport, heading at top speed for a distant smudge of smoke on the Huron horizon.
That smudge of smoke marked the tug of the desperadoes of whom they were in pursuit, but it seemed terribly faint and far off and almost as impossible of attainment as the pot of gold at the rainbow's foot.
CHAPTER VII.
TWO BRAVE LADS AT BAY.
"Are you there, Sandy?"
Through the darkness in the hold of the tug, in which they were confined (and which had recently been the place of Tom's captivity), Jack's voice reached the Scotch lad.