“Let’s see, the least distance across would be about fifteen hundred miles.”
“Then, at the rate we are being driven, it would take about twenty-four hours to make the passage,” calculated Mr. Jesson.
“About that time—yes,” agreed Jack. “I really think we had better try to do that.”
All agreed that it appeared to be the best plan. While they had been discussing this, they had passed over the last few miles of dry land. Looking down now they saw beneath them a vast expanse of gray, tumbling billows, tossing and rolling before the wind.
“If we ever took a tumble into the sea it would be all up with us,” commented Jack in a low voice to Tom.
“Yes; even a ship could hardly live in such a storm, and yet—look. Jack, back yonder,—isn’t that,—yes, surely it’s a craft of some sort!”
The lad indicated a point to the southward of them. Rising and falling in the great trough of the billows was a small vessel of some sort. For an instant Jack thought it was the Tarantula, but the next moment he made out that the vessel they were looking at had two masts and a yellow funnel amidships.
But another shift of the wind gave them something else to think of right then.
The blast “hauled round,” as mariners call it, and shifted to the south. The Flying Road Racer’s head was twisted around to the north and she was deflected from her course to the eastward and the hoped-for Florida coast.
“What shall we do now?” cried Ned Bangs, when he observed this.