The Captain returned from the bridge, and Beveridge repeated Dick's suggestion.
“How are we to know this schooner?”
“She's sky-blue with a white line.”
“Is she fast?”
“She don't need paddle-wheels to beat this.” This remark did not please Captain Sullivan. He turned away.
“I don't know how you feel, Smiley,” said
Beveridge, “but I didn't get much sleep last night. Did you?”
“Precious little.”
Within a few moments, while the colors of the dawn were fading, while the Foote was pounding heavily along northwest by north, the special agents and their two prisoners were sleeping like children.
At two o'clock Thursday morning the Foote lay, with motionless engines and lights extinguished, to the southward of Jennie Graham Shoal, near Outer Duck Island. Smiley and Harper, with Wilson close at hand, stood leaning on the rail, watching a launch that the crew were lowering to the water.