“And left the Silver Swan a derelict—almost as good as new—an’ him with a steamer?” roared Leroyd. “Man, you’re dreaming!”
“Then—what—has happened!” asked Alfred Weeks slowly.
“The gal—the gal here,” declared Leroyd, turning fiercely upon Milly. “She’s found ’em, I tell ye!”
He advanced upon the shrinking girl so threateningly, that Milly screamed, and rushed to the companionway. Leroyd pursued her, and Weeks followed the angry sailor.
Up to the deck darted the girl, and almost into the arms of one of the men whom Leroyd had driven out of the brig’s cabin. The fellow looked excited and he shouted to the angry sailor as soon as he saw him:
“De steamer come—up queek. Mr. Leroyd! Dey put off-a boat already.”
Milly, who had dodged past the speaker, turned her eyes to the east—the opposite direction from which the schooner had appeared—and beheld a steamship, her two funnels vomiting thick smoke, just rounded to, less than two cable lengths away.
It was the whaleback steamer, Number Three!
Already a boat had put off from the whaleback and it was now being swiftly propelled toward the Silver Swan.
The two men whom Leroyd and Weeks had brought with them from the schooner, had been smoking in the lee of the deck-house and had not discovered the steamer’s approach until she was almost upon the derelict.