“I am over twenty-one years old,” cried Kate, the light of rebellion in her eyes.
“I do not intend that either of you shall go, Katherine.”
“Dorothy, I’ll not submit to that,” cried Katherine, with a rising tremor of anger in her voice, “I shall not be set aside like a child. Who has more at stake than I? And as for capturing the rock, I’ll dynamite it myself, and bring home as large a specimen of it as the yacht will carry, and set it up on Bedloe’s Island beside the Goddess and say, ‘There’s your statue of Liberty, and there’s your statue of Tyranny!’”
“Katherine,” chided her father, “I never before believed that a child of mine could talk such driveling nonsense.”
“Paternal heredity, father,” retorted Kate.
“Your Presidential plan, Captain Kempt,” interposed Dorothy, “is excellent so far as Prince Lermontoff is concerned, but it cannot rescue Lieutenant Drummond. Now, there are two things you can do for me that will make me always your debtor, as, indeed, I am already, and the first is to purchase for me the yacht. The second is to form your own judgment of the man Johnson, and if you distrust him, then engage for me one-half the crew, and see that they are picked Americans.”
“First sane idea I have heard since I came into this flat,” growled the Captain.
“The Americans won’t let the Finlander hold me for ransom, you may depend upon that.”
It was a woe-begone look the gallant Captain cast on the demure and determined maiden, then, feeling his daughter’s eye upon him, he turned toward her.
“I’m going, father,” she said, with a firmness quite equal to his own, and he on his part recognized when his daughter had toed the danger line. He indulged in a laugh that had little of mirth in it.
“All I can say is that I am thankful you haven’t made up your minds to kidnap the Czar. Of course you are going, Kate, So am I.”
AS the sailing-boat cast off, and was shoved away from the side of the steamer, there were eight men aboard. Six grasped the oars, and the young clerk who had signed for the documents given to him by the Captain took the rudder, motioning Lermontoff to a seat beside him. All the forward part of the boat, and, indeed, the space well back toward the stern, was piled with boxes and bags.