If he could only have seen the hapless Mary Ellen then, he would have believed her quite battered indeed. For another rotten mast had fallen.
"Do you mean you're going to ask those on the steamer to look for the schooner," asked Mr. Sneed.
"That's what I'm going to do, if we can get to her," Russ said. "It's going to be nip and tuck, for she's going fast and she won't see us, as we're so low in the water. She's not heading in our direction, either, but I'll go after her on a long slant, and maybe I can reach her, or get near enough to make her see us. This is a pretty fast boat."
They were speeding over the waves, now down in a hollow, and again on the crest. Sometimes they would lose sight of the steamer altogether, and again they would catch a fleeting glimpse of her. And, when they did, she seemed farther off than ever.
"Oh, we'll never reach her!" said Mr. Sneed, despondently enough. "She'll never give us any aid."
"There you go!" cried Russ. "I thought you'd given up that sort of thing!"
"Well, I didn't mean just that," the actor said. "Perhaps we will make her see us after all."
"That's better!" exclaimed Russ. "We'll get her—or crack a cylinder!" and he tried to get a few more revolutions out of the fly wheel.
In spite of their brave front, Russ and his companion were sufficiently miserable. Their boat constantly shipped water, and they had to use the hand force pump, which, fortunately, was in the craft. A pump was connected with the cylinder cooling apparatus, designed to free the cockpit of bilge water, but the pump would not work.
Russ and Mr. Sneed were wet through, for the cabin could not be entirely closed against the spray. And they had nothing to eat except cold victuals. There was a gasoline stove aboard, but there was nothing to cook, for only an emergency ration had been put in the craft, and that was more because of a whim on the part of Jack Jepson, than because he really thought it would be needed.