“Certainly wish I was out of it,” murmured Charlie, steadying himself by the rail.
“We’ll soon leave that schooner yonder far astern, Bob,” he heard Captain Bunderley say.
Bob Somers raised a pair of marine glasses, which the skipper handed him, to his eyes. The vessel was apparently swept across the intervening space with lightning speed. He saw her spread of canvas bellying out in the wind, dingy masses of white slowly moving forth and back against the sky. The instrument shifted from point to point brought into view a network of rigging, spars, cabins, several sailors lounging near the forepeak and the line of water breaking crisply against the length of her hull.
“STEAMER COMING,” HE ANNOUNCED
“She’s plowing along bravely,” said Bob, bracing himself to resist the wind. “Hello!” Swinging the glass toward the faint line of the horizon, he had suddenly picked out from the gloom a thin wisp of smoke. “Steamer coming,” he announced.
“Very probably a whaleback bound for Chicago,” explained Uncle Ralph. He smiled quizzically. “A cat may look at the king, they say, so we’ll make an inspection of the monster at close range. Then we can race her back to Kenosha. Is she in range yet, Bob?”
“Yes, sir; and looks like a whopper to me. I can see that the sides of the hull are curved over at the top, which means it’s a whaleback, all right.”
The skipper shouted several directions to the helmsman. Martin Ricks thereupon changed the course of the “Fearless,” heading her directly toward the steamer, now distinctly visible to the naked eye.
The long stretch of water which separated them was being cut down with remarkable rapidity. Bob Somers, his eye to the glass, saw the three decks of the big white steamer crowded with passengers. Moving swiftly through the turbulent water, apparently unaffected by the continual onslaughts of wind and waves, she presented a majestic appearance.