an hour."

When Curlie returned from his mission ashore he carried but one bundle.
That resembled a fencepost in size and shape. It was carefully wrapped
and sealed in sticky black tar cloth.

"Going to throw a message overboard in case we're lost, I suppose,"
laughed Joe.

"Something like that," Curlie laughed back. Nevertheless, he carried the
thing with great care to his stateroom and deposited it beneath his
berth in the cabin forward on the main deck.

An hour later the two boys were standing on deck watching the shore
lights fade. Each was busy with his own thoughts and wondering, no
doubt, in his own way how much of adventure this trip held for him.

CHAPTER XIII

A GHOST WALKS

"Ever take much interest in gasoline engines?" Curlie suddenly inquired
of Joe.

"Yes, quite a bit; had a shift on one of those marine kinds last summer
on the Great Lakes."

"Good! You'll have to take a shift here on the _Kittlewake_. This trip
can't be made without sleep. I'll spell the captain at the wheel and you
can relieve that lanky engineer."

Again they lapsed into silence. Half unconsciously each boy was taking
stock of the craft they had requisitioned, trying to judge whether or
not she was equal to the task she had been put to. Speed she had in
plenty. "Do forty knots a 'our," the skipper put it, "an' never 'eat a
bearin'."

She was a trim craft. Narrow of beam, a two-master with a steel hull
that stood well out of the water forward, she rode the water with the
repose and high glee of the bird she was named after.

"Yes, she's a beauty, and a go-getter," Curlie was thinking to himself,
"but in a storm, now, four or five hundred miles from land, what then?"

Had he known how soon his question was to be answered he might well have
shuddered.

"Better go down and have a look at the engines before you turn in for a
wink of sleep," he told Joe.

When Joe had gone below, Curlie still sat there on the rail aft. The
throb of the engines beneath him, the rapid rush of air that fanned his
cheek, was medicine to his weary brain. He had been caught in a
whirlwind of events and here, for a time, he had been cast down in a
quiet place where his mind might clear itself of the wreckage of thought
that had been torn up and strewn about within it.

It had been a wild race. He had lost thus far; would he lose in the
end? Had he, after all, trusted too much to theory? Had these two sons
of rich men really only gone