"It's no use. They are too fast for us."
Jeff Trulliber spoke from the bridge of the Sea Ranger, some hours after the chase across the waters of Lake Huron had begun.
"It does look that way," said Tom, with a sigh, gazing after the cloud of smoke on the horizon which, fast as the Sea Ranger was urged, never appeared to get any closer.
"The rascals!" exclaimed Professor Podsnap, shaking his fist at the smoke cloud.
The events of the past few hours had transformed the man of science from an abstracted, dreamy individual, into quite a warlike, ferocious being. He could talk of nothing but the vengeance he would like to wreak on Walstein and Dampier had he them in his power.
"Dinnah am sub'bed! Dinnah am sub'bed! Dinnah am sub'bed!"
It was the voice of Rosewater, speaking, as usual, in "threes."
"I haven't much appetite, but I suppose we had better eat something," said Tom. "Jeff, you and the professor go first. I'll take the wheel. The engines won't need watching for a while."
Jeff was about to expostulate and urge Tom, who looked tired and jaded, to go to the table, but he suddenly recollected that the eldest Dacre lad was now, to all intents and purposes, the captain of the Sea Ranger.
So, with an "aye! aye, sir!" and a touch of his cap, he hastened off with the professor to the comfortable cabin astern. Rosewater, considering the short time he had been on board, had certainly performed wonders in the culinary department. The table was properly spread with linen and silver, and while we are not going to describe the meal in detail, it was as good as could have been obtained in any city hotel.
But, to the disappointment of the black, who hovered solicitously over their chairs, neither his master nor the professor ate much. Their conversation was more limited than their appetites. The strain under which they were laboring was beginning to tell on them.
Nor did Tom, when he in his turn took his place at the table, display any more ability as a trencherman. He knew the cruel, desperate characters of the men who had captured Sandy and Jack too well to hope for any good treatment for his brother and his chum. On the contrary, he did not know to what sufferings they might be put by their brutal captors, especially as Tom's own escape must have enraged Walstein and Dampier to the point of madness.
He speculated a good deal as to whether the two rascals had carried out their intention of writing a letter to his uncle, demanding ransom. It seemed probable, but in the rush of events that was coincident with the Sea Ranger's departure from Rockport, Tom had no opportunity to find out. He had, however, ascertained that there was a wireless station there, and at various other points along the lakes, and he promised himself that, at the first opportunity, he would take advantage of this, to send Mr. Dacre a wireless message.
"I only wish we had had the Sea Ranger so equipped," mused Tom, who had taken considerable interest in wireless at school, "I'm a pretty fair sender and receiver myself, and if we'd only had an apparatus I could have used it to advantage right now. For instance, I could have sent out 'a general alarm' for those ruffians on the tug."
Tom's meal, as may be supposed, did not take long, and he soon left the table, which caused Rosewater to remark, sotto voce:
"Dat boy am grievin'! dat boy am grievin'! dat boy suttinly am grievin', when he kin jes look at candied sweet potatoes an' say 'not to-day, fank you'!"
During the afternoon the same relative distances between the two craft were maintained. But, as the sun grew lower, and hues of copper and gold began to spread over the water Tom, on a visit to the deck from his vigil over the engines, noted, with keen joy, that they seemed to be gaining a trifle.
"I'll try and squeeze a bit more speed out of her," he promised, diving below and exercising all his engineering ability to coax even a half a knot more out of the laboring motors.
"How about it now?" he inquired, coming on deck again a few moments later.
"Better and better," exclaimed Jeff exultingly, "I can almost make out the outlines of the tug now. My! but she's burning coal!"
"She needs to," said Tom grimly, "if I ever get my hands on those chaps!"
But darkness fell, and the grim race still kept on.
It was one of those black nights that sometimes come in summer, when the darkness is like a velvety pall. There is no need to describe the chagrin of our friends.
"Maybe she'll show a light," said Jeff cheerily, "we were close enough to her when the dark shut in to see it if she does."
"But she won't," said Tom bitterly, "you may depend on that."
"What! she'll risk running Mackinac—we must be off there now,—without lights?"
"Those fellows would risk anything to keep out of the clutches of the law," rejoined Tom positively, "mark my words, they'll run the Straits without showing a glimmer."
"They are taking desperate chances."
"Such rascals as they are have been taking desperate chances all their lives," put in the professor gravely.
"Well, how about us, Tom?" asked Jeff after supper—a meal eaten with little more appetite than dinner,—"are we going to keep on?"
"I suppose so. I don't know that it is much use, though. In this darkness we are as likely to get miles off our course as we are to stick to their heels."
"I wish there were some way of making the daylight twenty-four hours long when you wanted it to be," said Jeff impatiently, peering ahead with his hands on the wheel.
"We'd have to be further north for that," said the professor, "to the north pole almost."
"Well, we'll go there, if necessary, to rescue Jack and Sandy," declared Tom, with firm conviction.
In the darkness the professor reached for Tom's hand and found it. He wrung it warmly. Adversity brings men and boys wondrous close.
"That's the talk, Tom Dacre," he said heartily, quite dropping his pedagogic air and speaking simply and strongly. "Although Providence may sometimes seem to favor rascals, never fear but that in the end she is on the side of honest men."
"Dat's jus' what ah ses, sah, when dey excuses me of stealin' dat ole Shanghai rooster down in Barbadoes," struck in Rosewater, who happened to be close by, "ah ses, 'Ah is white as de dribben snow, yo' wushup.' I nebber done go fo' ter steal no chickens nohow. Ah was jes'— Fo' de lub ob Moses, wha' am dat!"
The Sea Ranger, for the second time on that trip, struck something, with a harsh, grating sound.
Rosewater was thrown flat on his back and rolled off the bridge, bumping down the steps like a sack of potatoes. The others only saved themselves by clutching at the rail with might and main.
"We've struck something!" shouted the professor.
"Back her!" yelled Jeff, madly spinning his wheel over. Tom had darted below at the instant of the crash, and set the reverse levers. Already the Sea Ranger began to swing backward. But her movements were slow, almost like those of a crippled animal.
"Hey, there!" hailed a fresh, youthful voice out of the darkness ahead, "what have we hit?"
"Well, what do you think you've hit?" bellowed Jeff indignantly, "an ice-cream parlor?”