Page:Rover Boys on Land and Sea.djvu/99

Rh low voice, after he had made certain that nobody else was within hearing. "I am sorry for you."

"Really?" queried Dan Baxter, giving the mate a sharp look.

"Yes, I am, and if I can do anything to make it easy for you, count on me," went on Jack Lesher.

"Thank you."

"I suppose taking that money and the other things was more of boy's sport than anything, eh?"

"That's the truth. I wanted to get square with those Rover boys. They are my bitter enemies. I didn't want the money."

Just then old Jerry came in and the conversation came to an end. But Baxter felt that he had a friend on board and this eased him a little. He did not know that the reason Jack Lesher liked him was because the first mate was a crim inal himself and had once served a term in a Michigan jail for knocking down a passenger on a boat and robbing him of his pocketbook. As the old saying goes, "Birds of a feather flock together."

When the girls came on deck they found Baxter doing some of the work which Dick and Tom had been doing the morning before. At