Despite his stoicism, the colonel could not restrain a groan.
“This means my ruin,” he exclaimed. “We must get a boat of some kind at once and give chase.”
“There’s nothing in this harbor or south of New York that could touch the Endymion for speed,” declared Jack bitterly. “There’s only one chance in a thousand of stopping her! Oh, why didn’t I think of that before?”
Before the colonel could stop him or ask explanations, the boy rushed off. He headed straight for the wireless room. Sam was there with De Garros.
“What in the world——!” began Sam, as the disheveled, wild-eyed boy burst in. But Jack shoved his chum aside without a word and fairly threw himself at the wireless key.
He was calling the government quarantine station at the tip of Port Royal and the mouth of Kingston Harbor. There was just one way he could stop the Endymion and he meant to try it, forlorn hope that it was.
The spark flashed and roared and whined.
Other stations, those on ships far out at sea and along the coast of the island, broke wonderingly in as the volley of impatient calls went thundering out into the night.
The sweat poured from Jack’s blackened face as he bent over the apparatus in the boiling heat of the tropic night, and worked the wireless as he had never worked it before.
At last he raised the operator at the quarantine station.