"Twenty-five or thirty feet, Matt."
"You must be a little wrong in your estimate of the Dart's speed. It doesn't seem possible that she could turn a mile in less than three minutes."
"Well, look!" exclaimed McGlory, catching his first glimpse of Ping. "If there ain't little Washee-washee Slant-eyes I'm a Chink myself. When and how did he flash out in these parts?"
Matt, by way of relieving the tension aroused by McGlory's exciting news, told of the scuffle in the path leading up the bank, and then allowed the Celestial to finish with an account of the way he had come from Frisco.
"Let's get back to the boats," put in Lorry impatiently, when Ping had got through with his pidgin English. "Hadn't I better withdraw the Sprite, Matt, and let some other fellow meet Merton?"
Matt stared.
"I didn't believe you were that sort of a fellow, Lorry," he returned, "and I don't think so yet."
"But if the Sprite hasn't any chance——"
"She has a chance, and a good one, after I get her ready. There'll have to be more extensive changes, that's all."
"What other changes are you thinking about?"