“Surely he’ll send a boat now,” he said to Raynor.
But the young engineer shook his head.
“Braceworth isn’t a skipper who holds with doing things in a hurry,” he said; “wait a while.”
“Surely it is smooth enough to launch a boat now,” pursued Jack.
“If the skipper thought so, he’d do it,” rejoined Raynor.
The call to dinner came without Jack having secured communication with any other ship. He could only account for this by the supposition that the atmospheric conditions were bad. The wireless was evidently suffering from an attack of “atmospherics,” as the professional operators call it.
Before going down to his meal, Jack went forward to report to the captain. He found the burly commander with a sandwich in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. He was having a snack on the bridge in the shelter of the weather-cloth.
Jack, despite himself, felt a quick flash of admiration for a man who could face such discomforts so dauntlessly for the sake of his duty.
The boy would have liked to ask some questions, but he did not have the courage. So he stood in silence while the skipper pondered a full minute.
“Don’t bother about it any more,” he said at length. “I think we will be able to do without help.”