The second in command was sweeping the horizon with his night-glasses. It was pitch dark—the period of intense darkness between the false and the true dawn.
"Nothing in sight, sir!" reported Pengelly.
The words were hardly out of his mouth—in fact, Captain Cain had not time to telegraph "Easy ahead," when a loud voice, coming from close alongside, hailed:
"Ship ahoy! Throw us a line!"
CHAPTER VI
THE LAST OF THE IBEX
"I MUST hand her over to her new owner before the end of the present month, Gerald," declared Rollo Vyse, owner of the thirty-five-feet motor-yacht Ibex, to his chum Gerald Broadmayne. "If the worst comes to the worst, I must get professional assistance. You know what that means. Never could stick a paid hand. Be a sport and bear a hand."
"When do you expect to be back?" inquired Broadmayne.
His chum felt this was a decidedly encouraging question, notwithstanding the fact that the other had used the second person plural instead of the first.