During the balance of the night nothing went wrong. The wind had gone down with the sun, and through the cool quiet of the night the Hawk reeled off her customary thirty miles an hour. At three in the morning Carl awoke Dick, and from that on till seven o'clock the Dutch boy's snores were steady and continuous.
Morning brought no improvement in Townsend's condition. His face was flushed and his eyes were bright and feverish. He ate some of the breakfast which Carl dug out of the ration bag, but it was plain that he forced himself to do it.
"Where are we, Matt?" he asked.
"Below Jacksonville," Matt answered, "and traveling down the Florida coast."
"How's the wind?"
"It's abeam, Mr. Townsend," spoke up Ferral, "and we're slanted against it."
"That interferes with our speed, I suppose?"
"We're making barely twenty miles an hour, as I figure it," said Matt.
"Well, that will drop us into Palm Beach this evening—and that's where I'll have to give up. I must have broken a bone in my ankle, and the thing for me to do is to stay at Palm Beach and have it attended to. I thought, yesterday, that I might get over it, and so make myself of some use, but I see now that that's impossible. I'm only a hindrance and a drag, and it's necessary, if I want to avoid serious consequences, to have that foot attended to. My leg is of more importance than the Grampus, so I'll give up, right here, and you can drop me at Palm Beach and go back to Atlantic City. Will the twenty-five hundred I have paid you be enough for your time and trouble?"