Page:Ralph Paine--The Steam-Shovel Man.djvu/167

 American coast lest the quarry might double and slip into bay or river.

The whole ship's company crowded forward when the master of the Dauntless shouted from the wheel-house that he could make out a smudge of smoke to the northward.

Slowly the tell-tale smoke increased until it became a dense black streamer wind-blown along the blue horizon. Whatever the steamer might be, she was lavishly burning coal as if in urgent haste.

The captain of marines sternly addressed his hilarious men, threatening all sorts of punishment if they so much as cocked a rifle before the order was given. Shading their eyes with their hands, they stood and watched the funnel of the distant steamer lift above the rolling waste of ocean. Slowly her hull climbed into view, and the skipper of the tug recognized that rusty, dissolute vagabond of the high seas, the Juan Lopez.

Shortly after this, the fleeing filibuster must have recognized the Dauntless as hailing from the Canal Zone. The funnel of the Juan Lopez belched heavier clouds of smoke from her funnel and an extra revolution or two was coaxed