"Well, if you put it that way, of course I'll have to give in," said Captain Brisco. "I'll wait for you after the blow."
"Well, that's a respite, anyhow, but not a very pleasant one," said Alice.
"No," agreed Jack Jepson, who breathed easier now. "We're in for a bad storm, I reckon. We'll have to make everything snug."
"Attention!" once more came the hail from the steamer, and when Captain Brisco answered, he was ordered to follow a certain course by compass, as being safest.
"Then I can pick you up!" the steamer captain cried as the propellers began to churn the water. The British vessel swept away, leaving Jack Jepson still on the schooner, but under threat of arrest.
Then the forerunner of the storm came, filling the sails of the _Mary Ellen_, and heeling her over until the lee scuppers were awash.
"Make everything snug!" cried Captain Brisco. "It's coming on to blow great guns!"
Events aboard the _Mary Ellen_ did not transpire at all slowly. In a comparatively short space of time she had been converted from an old hulk into a good sailing vessel, she had put to sea with a party of moving picture workers, including a sailor accused of mutiny, who had broken jail. She had been stopped by the English ship, and now the old schooner was starting to scud before the blast of a hurricane. For the time being the accusation against Jack Jepson was forgotten.
"Lively now, everyone!" cried Captain Brisco. "When a storm breaks down here, it isn't any child's play. Double reefs in all sails, and two men at the wheel. Lash everything fast, pass life-lines, and passengers keep below."
"Oh, but I want to see the storm!" exclaimed Alice.
"Oh, how can you!" remonstrated Ruth. "It is going to be--awful!"
And indeed, if the evidence of sky and sea, and the moaning of the wind, were any indication, a great storm was in prospect.
The billows that had been rolling with oily smoothness now began to show little feathery crests of foam, and they were following one another with greater quickness, as if impatient to be at their shattering work.
The wind seemed most ominous of all. It was as though it came from afar off, down behind the horizon line that showed black, with a fringe of angry yellow in the west. A low, mumbling, roaring, moaning wind it was, that whistled mournfully through the rigging of the schooner, and howled down the companionways.