The _Dauntless_ was faster than the _Juan Lopez_ by two or three knots an hour. General Quesada had about ten hours' start in his flight up the coast. The pursuers could not hope to overtake him until the morning of the second day at sea. The excitement of the chase kept all hands alert and in high spirits. From the captain of marines in command of the detachment to the stokers in the torrid fire-room ran the fervent hope that General Quesada, outlawed and desperate, would make a fight of it. The marines regretted that cutlasses had not been included in their equipment. The proper climax of such an adventure was an old-fashioned boarding-party. The long, hot day and the sweet, star-lit night passed by and the powerful tug steadily tore through the uneasy swells of the Pacific, holding her course within sight of the Central 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 from her decrepit engines. The _Dauntless_ gained on her more slowly. Now the cheerful marines dived below to handle shovels instead of rifles, and they mightily reinforced the sweating stokers. "I can juggle coal pretty fast myself," said Jack Devlin, as he stripped off his shirt and followed the other volunteers. This frenzied exertion was needless. An hour or two and the _Dauntless_ must certainly overtake the laboring _Juan Lopez_. Sympathy for Walter Goodwin, anxiety to know what had become of him, made them wild with impatience. He was an American, one of their own breed, and he was in trouble. The vessels were perhaps three miles apart when the _Juan Lopez_ veered from her course and swept at a long slant toward the green and hilly coast. "There is no harbor hereabouts," shouted the skipper of the _Dauntless_. "They are going to beach her and take to the woods." The alarm on deck reached the ears of Jack Devlin, who popped out of the stoke-hole and viewed the manoeuvre with blank dismay.