One moment the Tartar was down in the hollow of the waves, and the next on the top of the swell, and it was only on the latter occasion that a glimpse ahead could be had.
"Now's your chance!" cried Lieutenant Walling to Jack. "Look!"
Eagerly Cora's brother peered through the mist, wiping the salty spray from his eyes. Just ahead, wallowing in the trough of the sea, as though she were only partly under control, was a steamer.
"I see her!" Jack shouted, and then the Tartar, went down in the hollow between two waves again, and he could glimpse only the seething water as it hissed past under the force of the wind.
"I think it's the Ramona—I'm not sure," was the lieutenant's next remark.
"What are you going to do about it?" Jack wanted to know.
"Hang on as long as I can," was the grim reply. "She doesn't look as though she were good for much more, and we are."
"Yes, we seem to be making it pretty well," Jack answered.
Indeed the staunch little Tartar was more than living up to her name. She was buoyant, and there was a power and thrust to her screw that kept her head on to the heavy seas, which allowed her to ride them.
The chase was now on, and a chase it was, for soon after sighting the steamer ahead of them, Lieutenant Walling, by means of powerful glasses, had made sure that she was the Ramona, and, without doubt, in charge of the mutineers, unless, indeed, the half of the crew opposed to them, had risen, and taken matters into their own hands.