"He is dickering for some kind of a time charter on the Henry Foster," snapped Captain Jim. "She couldn't pull a feather-bed off the Reef without breaking down. And I understand he has been cabling up the Gulf about another tug or two."
"Well, we can get all the tow-boats we need and good ones, can't we?" beamed McKnight. "Maybe we can't handle most any kind of a wrecking job ourselves! And there won't be any bluffs about it when we take hold."
"I'm certainly sorry for Dan, poor boy," said Captain Jim with a sigh. "He feels as if he were spying on Bart's father. And to make it worse, Bart is going to sail with the old man for a while and the lad will be mixed up in this nasty mess as sure as fate, and he will be on the wrong side of it. Here comes our Dan now. Drop the subject, Bill. It only makes the youngster more unhappy."
Dan Frazier had passed some restless nights since his return to Key West, but his mind was too sunny and youthful to believe that things were ever as bad as they might be. He found comfort in the hope that Captain Wetherly would spoil the plot to lose the Kenilworth. He had implicit confidence in his uncle's ability to win against any odds with the stanch Resolute, and now that a fair and open battle against Jerry Pringle was assured, Dan found himself eager for the fray. Barton had told him that morning:
"Father and mother are talking of sending me North to school, but I'm going to rough it at sea with father for a month or so. He said he tried to get you to work for him. I knew you wouldn't leave Captain Jim, but maybe we might have been lucky enough to work on a wreck together."
"You can't tell, Bart. Perhaps we shall, but we may be working against each other. I'll back Captain Jim Wetherly to be first man aboard the next vessel that goes on the Reef."
"Captain Jim is a good man," declared Bart, "but it will be a cold day when he lays alongside a wreck ahead of that daddy of mine."
The boys were busy with their unbeaten sloop Sombrero, and one day slid into another while Dan employed much of his spare time in helping his mother about the house and in painting the chicken-house, the fences, and porch with great pride in the spick-and-span results. Mrs. Frazier still professed to take no stock in the plot hatched by "Barton's father and Mary Pringle's husband," but she was nervous and absent-minded at times, and there was even more affection than usual in her manner toward Bart.
Dan tacked a calendar at the head of his bed and crossed off the days one by one, saying to himself when he awoke and looked at it: