Skippy glanced at the quietly rolling swell and felt somewhat reassured. But the voice of the siren jarred him and he was glad to see that Big Joe looked serious and determined. He hadn’t liked that note of raillery in his friend’s voice.
But despite Skippy’s fears Tully answered the siren call with all the haste of a good Samaritan. One might have supposed that he gloried in the duties of heroic service. And when he reached the Channel and they sighted the distressed launch, he opened wide his throttle until the old hull shook to the vibrations of the engine.
Skippy clenched his slim, brown fingers and sat tense in his seat while a spray rained into the boat. Big Joe coughed significantly and drove his ramshackle craft straight for the disabled cruiser.
“Now ain’t she the sweet lookin’ baby,” he observed as if he had never seen the launch before.
Skippy said nothing but grimly watched the three men who awaited their coming. Crosley he recognized at once, but the man standing alongside of him was a stranger. The third occupant of the Minnehaha was Marty Skinner. Skippy remembered him from his father’s trial and from the night Skinner had ordered him off the Apollyon without a hearing.
“You see him?” he asked Big Joe between clenched teeth.
“’Tis all the better,” Big Joe seemed to say in his bland smile.
He brought the kicker up alongside the Minnehaha and laid a life preserver over the coaming of his boat to prevent its scratching the gleaming hull of the launch. Skippy scrambled to the rescue and held the kicker as the ill-assorted pair rocked and rubbed in the heavy swell.
“Sure I don’t want to be scratchin’ her,” said Tully with a fine assumption of humble respect for the launch. “I was tellin’ the kid here, she’s some baby, hey? What’s bein’ the matter; power give out did she? ’Tis too bad, so ’tis.”
Skippy kept his eyes on space, but he had the feeling that Big Joe and he were being scrutinized with unfriendly stares.