They were perhaps a mile off the shore when Joyce, on the lookout forward, gave a sudden sharp hail through the speaking tube.
“Looks like a steamer. Passenger boat, I guess.”
“I reckon I’ll give her a call,” said Jack to himself as he hung up the tube. “My! won’t her passengers be surprised, though.”
He took out the binoculars and had a look at the steamer Joyce had made out. She was a fair-sized vessel with one black funnel amidships. Her white upperworks showed she was a passenger craft.
Jack hailed Ned Nevins on the engine platform.
“Put on your best bib and tucker, Ned, we’re going calling.”
“Calling!” came back the astonished exclamation.
“Yes, deep sea calling. Hail Tom and tell him to look his prettiest. Too bad we didn’t bring any cards.”
The Electric Monarch gave a dive and a swoop that caused all Heiny Dill’s qualms to come back tenfold.
“Himmel! Ve are sinking. Man der boat-lifes!” he yelled, but nobody paid any attention to him and he speedily recovered his equanimity, and with his rotund face poked out of the cabin port watched, with as much interest as any one else on board, the approach of the steamer.
“She’s a Boston and Portland liner bound north,” declared Jack to Ned Nevins who, as the motor did not need any attention just then, stood at the young skipper’s side in the pilot house.
“By her smokestack. Black with a white band.”
On came the steamer as the Electric Monarch swooped downward in a graceful curve to meet her. As the hydroaeroplane commenced her dive, there burst from the steamer’s whistle a jet of white smoke. Immediately after, the boys heard the booming greeting of the vessel’s siren.
Jack pressed the button that controlled the Electric Monarch’s siren and the next moment the hydroaeroplane was screeching an answering salute. They were now quite close to the steamer and could see her uniformed officers on the bridge and her decks black with passengers, their upturned faces looking like white discs.
“My! I’ll bet there’s a tall lot of speculation going on on board that craft right now,” said Ned, as the two boys gazed downward.
“I guess you’re right. It isn’t every day that the passengers of a liner have a chance to see a craft like this in action,” was the response.