"Full speed ahead! And mother will come down to the wharf when she hears our whistle off the red buoy."
CHAPTER VIII A FOG OF SUSPICIONS
It was not until a fortnight after Dan Frazier had been taken home to Key West that he was allowed to leave his room and lounge in a wicker chair on the cottage porch. His face and hands were thinner and the sea tan could not hide the pallor caused by fever, but he looked at the glad, green world with bright eyes and clamored for food like a young cormorant. His mother, who fluttered about him with fond anxiety, had tried to banish all mention of the Kenilworth, but now that he was able to be outdoors he fairly bullied her with questions which had been disturbing his days and nights of illness.
"I am sure Barton is as fond of you as ever," said she. "He may have been angry at first, but he has been here to ask about you almost every day. He told me you had nothing to do with his father's tug being cut in two by brother Jim, but he said you hooted at him when it happened. That wasn't like my Dan."
Her son tried to look repentant, but his eyes twinkled and he grinned as he replied:
"It wasn't nice of Bart to laugh at me while his cantankerous old daddy's tug was keeping the Resolute away from the wreck. How did Bart explain the smash-up?"
"He as much as said that Jim Wetherly behaved like a pirate and a lunatic, though of course Barton is too polite to put it in so many words," confessed Mrs. Frazier with a sigh. "It has made a lot of talk in Key West. Mr. Pringle swears he is going to take it into court. He declares he had made a contract with the captain of the Kenilworth when along came Jim and rammed him to get the job away from him."
"Made a contract with the Kenilworth! I should say Jerry Pringle did," snorted Dan with rising color. "He made his rotten contract in Pensacola, months before the ship was wrecked. He didn't get half what's coming to him. I wish Uncle Jim had sunk the Henry Foster. What else has happened?"