By this time the enlisted men had come aboard, many of them going below to the cabin.
"You may start, now," continued Captain Poster, jumping to the pier. "Catch anything you can that has arms aboard for the other frontier. Good-bye and good luck!"
Hardly had the motor boat gotten under way when the tug, with Corporal Shimple and four men aboard, also left her berth. The tug went only a short distance out into the stream, then cast anchor for the night. The tug was to be held in reserve, and at the same time her mate and crew were thus prevented from communicating any news about the motor boat to possible Mexican lurkers on shore.
The five young officers of the two services had seated themselves on top of the deck-house at the rear of the bridge-deck. Hank Butts sat midway down on the deck-house, yawning as though he would like to turn in. After he had got his engine working smoothly Engineer Joe Dawson came up from the engine room forward, taking his stand beside Skipper Tom Halstead.
For five minutes Joe was silent, as the boat kept on up the Rio Grande. He half-turned, once in a while, to cast a covertly-admiring glance at the young officers seated at their rear. At last Joe whispered exultantly in his chum's ear:
"You've hit the truth at first trial," returned Skipper Tom, in an undertone, as he kept his glance ahead over the river.
"I'm not much given to exaggeration, am I, Tom?"
"I never knew that you had an acquaintance with exaggeration," Halstead answered.
"Then perhaps you'll believe me, Tom, when I tell you that I'd follow those officers over Niagara or into Vesuvius, if they happened to be bound either way."
"I know you would, Joe," Tom answered, without smiling, for he knew his chum through and through.
"Tom, those young officers would _assay up a big lot of fight to the ton_!"
Having thus relieved himself of that strong conviction Joe Dawson seated himself on the roof of the forward house and did not speak again for twenty minutes.
By the time that the eight miles upstream had been covered, and Skipper Tom Halstead had headed the boat down again for its straight sixteen-mile run, he called down to his chum:
"Joe, will you come up and hold the wheel for me for two or three minutes?"