"I've just put the clamp on the safety-valve, Captain. She's carrying thirty pounds more steam than the law allows, and if she cracks she'll crack wide open. Hooray! Give it to her!"
As if the captain of the stranded steamer were content to know that his message had been seen and answered, he sent up no more rockets, nor did any more answering signals gleam out to seaward. It was a race in the dark. The Resolute and her rival, if such it was, must run down two sides of a triangle whose apex was the unseen vessel on the Reef. Captain Jim had taken the compass bearings of the Kenilworth's rockets and, regardless of the risk he ran in driving his steamer along the very fangs of the Reef, he held her in a straight line for her goal and prayed that her bottom would not be ripped off or her straining boilers blow her sky high.
Almost at the same instant that the excited deck force of the Resolute glimpsed a red light winking far off to starboard, they saw the mast-head light of the stranded vessel almost dead ahead.
"That red light out yonder belongs to J. Pringle," muttered Captain Wetherly, "And we must be pretty near the same distance from that mast-head light on the Reef. It's going to be a whirlwind finish, all right."
The Resolute kept full speed ahead as if she intended to cut her way through the stranded steamer. Not until a huge black shape dotted with a row of cabin lights loomed a little to one side of her headlong flight, did Captain Jim shift his course to round to in the deep water beyond the Reef. His fists were clenched and his jaw was set hard as he glared from the wheel-house door to find the oncoming boat which he had sworn to beat. Her lights were no more than a quarter of a mile away as the Resolute crept under the quarter of the stranded cargo steamer.
"If that's you out yonder, Jerry Pringle," growled Captain Jim to himself, "you've slowed up to find out who the dickens we are. No wonder you're worried. Come on and have it out, you hatchet-faced pirate."
He seized the whistle cord and the Resolute roared a long, sonorous blast of greeting and defiance. Then he caught up a megaphone and shouted toward the steamer stranded on the Reef:
"Ship ahoy! I'll stand by to put a line aboard at daylight. Are you resting easy as you are?"
"What steamer is that?" came the answering hail from the darkness.
"The tow-boat Resolute of Key West, first vessel to come to your assistance. Who are you?"