Although Tom was courageous, he was never reckless. He had accepted Mary’s challenge on the instant. But it was not without thought.
“The moment I read that cablegram from Karofsen I saw what it meant,” he told Ned. “The Winged Arrow can go where no vessel can sail. If she arrives at Reykjavik in good condition, she can sweep the whole of the Greenland Sea, back and forth, until the berg on which the men were cast away is found. If Karofsen is honest——”
“That is a chance, too,” retorted Ned. “It looks fishy to me, Tom.”
“What looks fishy?”
“His story. He knew all about that treasure of more than a hundred and twenty thousand Danish crowns. Humph! Suppose he and some of his crew got up a scheme to grab the gold and pitch those who were not in their confidence, as well as the passengers, overboard? Looks fishy.”
“You sound mighty suspicious. And it might be so. Anyway, how are we going to prove even such an awful thing if we can’t be on the ground——”
“Huh! On the ice would sound better,” grumbled Ned.
“All right. Whichever way you wish to put it. Anyway, if we let the thing go on until next spring any crime of the character you suggest would be well covered up. I am going to get there as soon as the wings of the wind will take me.”
His decision, which he communicated to Captain Olaf Karofsen by cable, must have amazed that individual immensely. Tom cabled two hundred dollars through a Danish-American bank for the captain’s use until Tom himself arrived in Reykjavik.
“Expect me on Friday,” was the concluding sentence of Tom’s cablegram to the skipper of the wrecked Kalrye. That day was three days following the date of the cablegram. Later it was proved that the message shook society in the Icelandic port to its very foundations.