CHAPTER XIX
TED DYER, SAILOR BY MARRIAGE
Still Ab continued to hail from the bow of the motor yacht, youngCaptain Tom having gone forward to stand by him and give directions.
"We'll take you aboard, and have a look at you, anyway," Ab calledthrough the megaphone. "That is, if you make us closely enough to catcha rope from us. But we won't change our course, or stop ship."
"Sa-ay, that's hardly fair!" came the indignant protest.
"If you want to get aboard this craft, do as we tell you," Ab Perkinsretorted, doughtily.
"A-all right! I can't stay out on the ocean alone any longer, anyway!"came back the answer, with a new note of determination in it.
"Then stop talking," directed Ab, "and get down to your oars, so as torun just alongside of us. And stand by to catch the line that'll bethrown to you."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
Catching up a coil of line, Perkins ran down nearer the waist of theship. A seaman stood by with the ship's end of a rope boarding-laddermade fast. Captain Tom remained up in the "Panther's" bow.
Then, out of the fog, shot a dory into sight. In it sat a boy of aboutsixteen, wearing only a ragged shirt and hardly less ragged trousers. Hebent at a pair of oars, his glance cast backward over one shoulder as heguided the craft so as to pass the "Panther" without being engulfed byher.
It was close work, and required rather fine seamanship on the part ofthe boy in the boat.
Had the "Panther" been going at anything like her full speed the effortto lay alongside would have ended in disaster. Even as it was, CaptainTom Halstead watched with not a little anxiety.
"Ready--catch the line!" sang Ab Perkins. The young executive officerof the "Panther" possessed fine judgment and a straight eye for suchwork. As the coil left Ab's hand it went whirling, uncoiling, throughthe air. The line landed fairly across the shoulder of the other boybelow. He caught the rope, then sank down to the middle seat of thedory, bracing himself and holding on hard.
As the line became taut the bow of the dory was yanked about. The littlecraft heeled a bit, then righted, bumping in against the larger hull,then gliding off and riding rather easy.
The seaman at Ab's side now dropped the rope boarding-ladder overboardso that its lower end rested fairly in the dory.
"Swing onto the ladder, and kick the dory loose," directed Ab Perkins,steadily. "I reckon you can do it."
"Don't you want to recover the dory, to pay for my passage to land?"inquired the boy below.
"Not a bit of it," uttered Ab. "Too much truck aboard now."
"Then here comes--not much of anything," laughed the boy, in a clear,cool voice, as he seized the rope ladder, and sprang up onto it. As heleft the dory that little craft drifted astern, soon to be lost to sightin the great fog.
In another moment the boy was aboard. No stranger was he to the sea.That much could be told by the neat, seaman-like way in which he came upthe rope boarding-ladder.
"I've come on board, sir," laughed the stranger, touching the make-shiftfor a cap which he wore.
"So I see," nodded Tom Halstead, coming aft from the bow. "What's yourname?"
"Ted Dyer."
"Hailing port?"
"'Frisco."
"Sailor, by trade?"
"No," laughed Ted, his eyes twinkling; "a sailor by marriage."
"What's that?" demanded Halstead, almost sharply. He almost suspectedthat the other boy was making game of him. If Dyer came from the"Victor," such levity was misplaced.
"My mother's sister married a captain of a freight schooner," Tedexplained, more soberly.
"Oh. So you, so to speak, ran away to sea with your uncle?"
"No; he ran away from me _at_ sea," answered young Dyer, more soberly.
"How long has your uncle been captain of the 'Victor'?" Halsteaddemanded, swiftly, hoping to catch this other boy off his guard.
"The 'Victor'?" repeated Ted, opening his eyes wide. If he wasshamming, then it was a fine bit of acting.
"Didn't you come from the steam yacht 'Victor'?" demanded Captain Tom,looking hard at the boy.
"Never heard of the craft before," declared Ted. Then: "Hold on, though.I'm lying without meaning to, it would seem. Yes; I know the 'Victor.'She's a hundred and twenty-two foot steam yacht, fine and fast."
"That's the 'Victor' just over to port," went on Tom, still eyeing theother youth, closely.
"Is it?" asked Ted Dyer. "Then your eyesight is sharper than mine."
"Don't try to get funny," warned Halstead.
"I don't want to," protested Ted. "You all strike me as first-ratefellows. And, anyway, you've fished me up out of the vasty deep, so tospeak. Where's your captain?"
"You're looking at him," replied Halstead.
"Again," laughed Ted, "you're crediting me with finer eyesight than Ipossess."
"I am the captain," Tom replied, struggling against an inclination tolike this boy. Ted was so brimming over with good humor, that it seemedalmost wicked to suspect him of anything worse than being hungry.
"You're the captain?" demanded Ted, taken aback, and staring hard. Then,as he took in the details of Halstead's uniform, and noted the looks onthe faces of the others about him, he became convinced.
"Captain----" began Ted.
"Halstead," supplied Tom.
"Captain Halstead, as I'll have to dead-beat my passage back to SanFrancisco, I shall be mighty glad if you'll assign me to some work todo."
"On your word of honor you didn't come off the 'Victor'?" insisted theyoung skipper, still looking hard at the new arrival on board.
"On my honor I didn't. Why? Is it a crime to come on board from the'Victor'?"
"Very nearly," Halstead replied, dryly. "We've got one fellow in thebrig on board, charged with that very offense."
"Whew!" muttered Ted, looking grave. "Then what's the sentence forcoming on board from a dory?"
"How did you come to be in that dory?" pressed the young skipper of the"Panther."
"You might call it mainly my uncle's offense," replied Ted Dyer, moregravely. "You see, my parents are dead. They left me a little money, andput me under the guardianship of my uncle. He put the money into thefreight schooner, 'Nancy.' However, even at that, some of the earningsof the schooner had to be put aside as belonging to my estate. So myuncle, being a bright man, conceived the idea, night before last, ofputting me adrift in the dory you fished me out of. At the time he hadonly a drunken sailor named Griggs on deck with him. Griggs is a fellowmy uncle, Captain Dalton, by name, can depend on. Uncle got me to gointo the dory that was towing astern. Made believe he wanted me to seeif anything had fouled the rudder. Then he cut the line and left meadrift. I guess he figured that there was a storm coming; that I'd neverbe heard from again, and that he'd get the schooner all for himself."
"The infernal scoundrel!" breathed Halstead, indignantly. Then,remembering his first suspicions, he shot in, closely:
"So your uncle isn't captain of the 'Victor'?"
"What's the joke?" demanded Ted, gazing at those about him, a look ofwonder in his innocent blue eyes.
Tom Halstead was beginning to soften. Despite the grave need of cautionand suspicion, Ted's honest good nature was infectious. Besides, as boththe yachts were going at eight miles an hour, and the "Victor" wastraveling only abeam, anyway, how could a boy in a dory put off from thesteam yacht be so far ahead of the position of either boat as to comedown upon the "Panther" in the fashion Ted had done? Altogether, CaptainTom felt that he might do well to drop some of his suspicions. That sameidea was occurring to some of the others who listened. It was JoeDawson, however, who first gave voice to this new idea.
"I reckon Ted is all right, Captain," spoke up the young chief engineer."At any rate, I feel willing to go bail for his good behavior on thiscraft."
"I guess this youngster is all right, Captain," spoke Joseph Baldwin,next stepping forward. "I'll take a chance with him, if you're willing."
Ted Dyer, meanwhile, was looking from o
ne face to another, as though hewondered what kind of a crowd he had encountered.
"You may think us a bit strange, Dyer," spoke Tom, with a quiet smile."The truth is, we have the best of reasons for being suspicious of theother yacht you've heard us talking about. You can stay aboard, andwe'll try to make you comfortable."
"I haven't anything else to do, sir," said Joe, turning once more to theyoung captain. "I'll take Dyer in hand if you say so."
"Go ahead," assented Halstead. "First of all, take him below, Mr.Dawson, and introduce him to the cook. I imagine that will beagreeable."
"You're good at guessing, Captain," laughed the San Francisco boy,saluting.
"Come along then, Ted Dyer," proposed Joe, taking him by the arm with afriendly grip. "You can come below to my cabin and chat while you eat."
"I guess I can do a lot of both," admitted the San Francisco boy, goingalong with Joe after making a bow that was intended to include everyone.
Joe, however, did not at first press the other boy to talk much, but wasdelighted at seeing Dyer able to stow away so much satisfying food.
"Now," demanded the newcomer, pushing his chair back from the table,"what am I going to do aboard this craft to earn my way?"
"What do you know best how to do?" asked Dawson.
"You said you are the chief engineer?"
"Yes."
"If there's anything I'm crazy about," confessed Ted Dyer, "it'smachinery. Why couldn't I go to work in your engine room?"
"That's a rather unfortunate question," returned Joe, feeling a bituncomfortable. "You see, the fellow who really _did_ come aboard fromthe 'Victor' got into the engine room and tried to put our machineryinto a useless condition. So you can understand why Captain Halsteadwould stare if I told him I had put you in the engine room."
"What's all this business about the 'Victor,' anyway?" demanded TedDyer, curiously.
So Joe told him enough to enable the other boy to understand, includingthe fact that a United States assistant district attorney and two deputymarshals were aboard intent upon arresting a bank absconder believed tobe on board the "Victor."
"And that boat is trying to lose you in the fog, so that Mr. Abscondercan get away?" asked Ted Dyer, understandingly.
"That's the case, Dyer."
"Then I can understand why it wouldn't look well for me to ask for a jobin the engine room," pondered Ted, thoughtfully. "I suppose, though, Icould go in and help the cook. I couldn't do any harm there. Yes, Icould, though; I might poison the dishes or the food."
Joe Dawson gave a hearty laugh, so completely was he disarmed ofsuspicion of the other boy.
"I guess perhaps we'd better leave it all to Captain Halstead," proposedJoe Dawson. "He's a fine, splendid fellow, as you'll find."
"Fine and suspicious," retorted Ted, with a grimace.
"He has to be, on a strange cruise like this. But you'll find CaptainTom Halstead as good as fine gold, Ted. Halstead is my chum."
"If he's your chum," vouchsafed Dyer, heartily, "then I'll take my oathhe's all right."
"Come up on deck," nodded Joe, moving toward the companion way.