"Half-past three," said Tom, glancing at the clock on the instrument panel. "A slow passage."
"Fast as I'd want to make it," declared Captain Britten. "A steamer'd have taken a good many hours where we needed only minutes. There's the old 'Betsy B.' tied to her pier, so let's get over to her!"
In the Harbor at Key West
The idling engines were speeded up and the flying boat moved slowly across the harbor. A tug with smoke curling from her single thick funnel lay near the broad-beamed barge.
A Tug Lay Near the Barge
Over the stern of the latter several grinning Negroes leaned. Their ancestors might have been stricken dumb at sight of the great sky craft tying up to their ship, but these darkies were familiar with daily passage of planes bound for South America and showed but little astonishment. In a liquid Spanish-English patois they bade the whites welcome. All of them were old retainers of Captain Britten.
As the elderly man had said, the old barge had served as winter quarters for him during the past years. In consequence, he had had her little cabins fitted up more luxuriously than is customary on such vessels. Tom and Ned were given one far more comfortable than they had expected.
