WELCOME TO THE "SENECA."
Swiftly, steadily urged on, like some great beetle moving across the surface of a sheet of burnished glass, the gig was impelled over the smooth expanse of the sheltered waters; for, although outside in the Sound itself the whitecaps were prancing under the lee of the islands, here it was almost a flat calm.
The men rowed in perfect unison, like some accurately timed piece of mechanism. Before long they could make out, lying in under the shoulder of a distant island, the outlines of a slate-colored craft.
"The Seneca?" asked Ned of the coxswain.
"Yes, sir; that's the Seneca."
"She looks a trim little hooker."
"Aye, aye, sir; she's all of that, sir."
Ned and Herc gazed with burning eyes and dancing pulses at the little craft. She was certainly not very large or imposing, but to them just then the finest Dreadnought ever launched could not have brought such emotions.
Not more than two hundred and fifty feet long, the Seneca appeared at first glance more like the ideal of a smart yacht than a craft of war. She had a sharp, overhanging bow and a beautifully modeled stern. Her rigging was of the schooner type, with the spider-web outlines of her wireless aerials slung between them.