Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/309



ELSON and Tip and Martin leaned beside Number Four gun and explained to each other at great length and with much vehemence just why there wasn't the ghost of a chance of the Gyandotte reaching the scene of action in time to take a hand. And then, having absolutely convinced themselves of that fact; they at once proceeded to prove just as conclusively that, being only sixty miles away when the message was caught, it would be the easiest thing in the world to arrive before it was too late. From which you will gather, and rightly, that all three wanted very much to have a finger in the pie and were too anxious and excited to be consistent.

The Gyandotte was shaking from stem to stern with the ardor of her engines and her two big stacks were spouting smoke. A good twenty-three miles an hour was what she was reeling off, and had the sea been a bit less unfriendly she might have bettered that by a fraction. What 284