“Don’t worry, ma’am,” said the kind captain, who knew perfectly well that she was uneasy and fretting. “I know what the trouble is, and I’ll have her going in a minute. If I were you, I’d eat a bite, or take a drink of milk. I’ve a fresh bottle in that locker there. You don’t want to get played out before we come up with the little chap.”
Mrs. Horton drank a glass of milk, but she could not eat. And presently “chug-chug, chug-chug!” sounded merrily again.
“Now we’ll make up lost seconds,” said Captain Franklin sturdily.
“There’s a boat!” cried Mrs. Horton suddenly.
“It’s one of the fishing fleet,” replied the captain, who knew practically every boat in the harbor. “One of the men has likely rowed out with bait for a party that wants to stay out all night. But I’ll hail him.”
He stood up, and, putting his hands to his mouth, roared, not “Ship Ahoy!” as they do in books, and as Mrs. Horton secretly expected him to, but “Hey, you!”
Tired and anxious as she was, Sunny’s mother had to laugh.
“Seen anything of a stray rowboat this afternoon?” the captain was calling. “White boat, broad green stripe—one of Jo Grimes’. Haven’t passed it, have you?”
The solitary man in the other boat stood up and bellowed something in reply that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Horton could understand.
“He says he hasn’t seen any boat since dinner time,” said the captain, dropping back into his place by the engine. “I was hoping he hadn’t. Ned Butterworth is so slow, he’d never think of stopping the boat if it ran smack into him.”