“No; they’re through for to-night. They exchanged the good-bye signal. Now to find Tom and get him to translate this jumble of figures.”
But Tom, after expending a lot of fruitless labor on the papers, declared he could make nothing of them.
“Maybe they’ve changed the code, or maybe——”
“They’ve been using Spanish this time,” exclaimed Jack, struck by a happy inspiration.
“Cracky! I’ll bet that’s just what they have been doing,” cried Ned. “Say, fellows, you just copy out those messages while I get Captain Andrews below in two shakes of a duck’s tail.”
He bounded off up the companion way, while Tom busily transcribed. So fast did he work that he had a lot of words written out when the skipper appeared.
“So you’ve been catching something out of the air, have you?” he asked as he entered the cabin.
“Yes; and I guess it’s important, too,” declared Jack, “but you’ll have to translate Tom’s notes. Captain, because it’s all in Spanish.”
“That will be simple enough,” said Captain Andrews, sitting down and drawing toward him the scattered sheets which Tom had already rendered from the figures of the code.
The veteran seaman began stolidly to con over the Spanish words, not all of which, owing to Tom’s unfamiliarity with the language, were written in correct form. But before long his composed attitude gave way to excitement.