t," Darrin muttered to himself. "My, but she looks her
part! While she isn't large for a freighter, she's well calculated for
that class of work."

"Your best speed ahead, sir!" shouted Whyte, through a megaphone.
"Board the yacht on her starboard quarter. Quick work, sir!"

"Very good, sir!" Dave called back.

Then he stepped swiftly amidships to the engineers.

"Get every inch of speed to be had out of the engines, my man."

Next, to the helmsman:

"Quartermaster, steer straight ahead and make that yacht's starboard
quarter!"

As Dave turned, he found his own face within three inches of Seaman
Runkle's glowing countenance.

"Runkle," Dave smiled, "we are fond of the Englishmen. Their
commanding officer called for our best speed, and we're going to show
it."

"Aye, aye, sir!" grinned Runkle. "When any foreigner asks for the best
we have in speed, he's likely to see it, sir."

Already the "Hudson's" launch had drawn smartly ahead of the British
craft, and the distance between them grew steadily, though the
Englishman was doing his best to keep up in the race.

Under the yacht's stern dashed the launch, and brought up smartly
under the starboard quarter, laying alongside.

"Hullo, there! Vat you call wrong?" demanded a voice in broken English
from the yacht's rail.

"Naval party coming aboard, sir," Dave responded courteously. "Take a
line!"

"I vill not!" came the defiant answer.

"All the same, then," Dave answered lightly. "Bow, there! Make fast
with grapple. Stern, do the same!"

Two lines were thrown, each with a grappling hook on the end. These
caught on the yacht's rail. Three or four sailormen, one after the
other, climbed the grappling lines. Two rope ladders were swiftly
rigged over the side, by the Americans on the yacht's deck. Dave
Darrin was quickly on board, with twenty of his seamen and all his
marines, by the time that the English launch rounded in alongside the
port quarter.

"You? Vat you mean?" demanded a short, swarthy-faced man, evidently
captain of the yacht, as he peered at Dave's party. "You are American
sailors!"

"Right," Darrin nodded.

"And dese are British vaters!"

"No matter," Dave smiled back at the blustering fellow. "Here come the
Englishmen."

For he had sent four of his men to catch and make fast the lines from
the British launch, and now the British jack-tars, taking their
beating in the race good-humoredly, were piling on board.

"Captain," cried Lieu