“But where is Tom?” cried Jack, the thought of the son of the magnate coming suddenly to him.
“Hush,” said one of the sailors from the Halcyon, “don’t talk too loud. He might hear you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jack, staring at the man.
“The boy went off in one of the boats. We lost them in the fog. The good Lord only knows where they are now.”
“Drive the old man crazy when he hears of it, I reckon,” put in another man, the mate of the yacht. “He thought the world and all of Tom, he did.”
“As if I didn’t know that,” thought Jack; and then aloud to Mr. Brown:
“There’s another boat adrift, sir. Aren’t we going to look for it?”
Mr. Brown shook his head and pointed to the western horizon. The sun, like a big copper ball, was sinking.
“It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said. “But cheer up, they’ll be picked up somehow. You can depend on that.”
“I only hope so,” said Jack sadly.