In the meantime, Jupe had been hustled ashore by Jack, who had taken up his position at the wheel, and in a very few seconds the lines that held the motor cruiser to the wharf were cast off. Jupe made a flying leap aboard as the tide swung the _Vagrant_ from her resting place.
At the same instant Jack jerked the bell pull, which signaled Tom in the engine-room below to throw in the clutch, and as the propeller began to revolve the _Vagrant_ backed slowly out. In a few minutes Jack rang in the “Go-ahead” signal, and swinging the doughty little craft in a short semicircle, the young captain headed her almost due S. E.
Tom emerged on deck wiping his hands on a bit of waste.
“Everything all right below?” inquired Jack as his cousin took up a position beside him.
“Running like a dollar watch,” was the response.
“Well, twelve knots is her registered gait, but I might coax a bit more out of her.”
“I will. What time do you think we ought to reach the vicinity of the _Sea King_?”
“It’s a trifle over a hundred miles to the spot at which she gave her bearings,” was the response, with a glance at the chart which lay exposed in the uncovered case in front of the wheel. “It’s now just one o’clock. Say, about midnight.”
“Phew! You propose to pick up a yacht, whose location you know only vaguely, in the _dark_?”
“Not so dark, either. There’ll be a moon at ten-thirty. Anyhow, if we keep right on this course we’re bound to come within a few miles of the given bearings.”
“I guess that’s so. Well, I’m off below to watch the engines.”
“Better start the dynamo and get some ‘juice’ into the storage batteries. I mean to try the wireless again before long.”
Tom nodded, and vanished below once more. Jupe came forward from the stern, where he had been coiling lines and generally setting things to rights.
“Marse Tom,” he said, with some hesitation, “is dere any objection to informationing me concerning de percise objec’ ob dis here penguination?”
“Why, no, Jupe,” rejoined Jack, with a smile at the old negro’s remarkable choice of what he himself would have called “highfaluting” words, “the _Sea King_, with my father on board, as you know, is in some sort of trouble, and we are going to the rescue as fast as we can.”