“Get a craft at once—large enough to take us all. You understand, Captain Blake, that price is nothing now!”
The same negro youth, who had been the informer in the first place, now spoke up. “I knows whar you-all kin hire a fine big gaserline launch—my boss rents it out ebery day. I kin sen’ yuh dere.”
Giving Captain Blake minute directions to find the boat which was not far off, the negro gladly pocketed another windfall of money from the owner of the White Crest.
In less than twenty minutes the launch came alongside the wharf and its owner stepped out. “It’s the quickest and safest boat in Florida. Many’s the trip I takes to Havana during the season.”
Thus the weary party gladly got into the launch, and its owner started on the way to seek for and find the White Crest.
CHAPTER VI—MR. DALKEN’S PATERNAL TRAINING
Conversing pleasantly, and smoking one cigar after another, Mr. Dalken offered no cause for one to think he was boiling within, or that he was contemplating a severe correction for his daughter Elizabeth. But Mr. Ashby knew him so well that he would have felt more at ease had his friend expressed a little impatience and annoyance at the unexpected trick played by the girl.
The men in the party sat with the owner who drove the great launch through the calm waters, but ever and anon he swerved suddenly to avoid, as he said, reefs of coral hidden by the wavelets. He skirted the coast because they needed to keep a watchful lookout for the yacht which might have anchored at one of the many tiny inlets along the shore, where bootleggers thrived during the great social season in the South.
The yacht’s crew sat in the stern of the boat, but the ladies were comfortably at rest in the small saloon. There was but one absorbing thought and subject for them: what would be Elizabeth’s punishment when her father could judge her heedless act?
After stopping at several small ports, where it seemed likely they would find the White Crest at anchor with other crafts from the winter resorts, the owner of the launch remarked to Captain Blake: