"So far, so good," remarked Tom, at the end of the struggle, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow. "Now I'll have to give my natural eloquence a chance and spread it all over my letter. Just wait till you see that letter. It's going to be a cuckoo. But I haven't any doubt as to how it will turn out. Dad's a good sport, and he's taken chances himself all his life. I'll bet he'd like to be in on this himself."
Phil in the meantime had been writing to Steve, laying the matter before him, and enjoining him by all that was good to let him have an answer in twenty-four hours.
"Humph!" sniffed Dick, as he glanced over Phil's shoulder. "Twenty-four hours! He'll telegraph an answer in five minutes after he reads the letter. I know Steve."
"I guess you're about right," smiled Phil. "You've got the old boy pretty well sized up."
There was so much to do that day that the time passed as though on wings, and in the evening, in accordance with arrangements made over the telephone, Benton came up again to get their final word on the matter.
"No need to ask though," he remarked, when the first greetings were over. "I can see that there are no cold feet in this crowd."
"Warm as toast," laughed Phil. "There was considerable chilliness about the pedal extremities of our folks though. We had to talk until we were hoarse. We carried our point though, and as far as Dick and I are concerned the matter's a go. Tom's been talking over the radio and the thing's still in the air, but Tom considers it as good as settled. I've written to Steve too, and we expect to get an answer tomorrow by telegraph."
"Some speed boys," smiled Benton, "but that's the way to go at it. Either it's worth nothing at all, or it's worth every ounce of speed and energy we can put in it. What were some of the objections that your folks put up."
"Well, there were a good many of them," replied Phil. "First of course was the danger. They conjured up all sorts of horrible things, sudden tropical storms, drowning, sharks and things like that. Then too, they thought that it was in the nature of a wild goose chase. If the ship had been sunken recently, they'd have thought we had more of a chance. But two centuries ago seems a long while. They thought the ship might have broken up, sunk in the sand, wholly disappeared."