Part 3 (1/2)
”She'll stand a lot of knocking about, and that's a fact,” agreed Rob.
”Well,” remarked the old man, gazing about him, ”it's a good thing that she is, fer, if I'm not mistaken--and I'm not often off as regards the weather--we are goin' ter have quite a little blow before yer boys get back home.”
”A storm?” asked Tubby, somewhat alarmed.
”Oh, no; not what yer might call a storm,” laughed the captain; ”but just what we used to term a 'capful uv wind.'”
”Well, so long as it isn't a really bad blow, it won't trouble the Flying Fish,” Rob a.s.sured him.
”Hullo!” exclaimed the old man suddenly. ”What queer kind uv craft is that?”
He pointed back to the mouth of the now distant inlet, from which a curious-looking black craft was emerging at what seemed to be great speed.
”It's that hydroplane of Sam Redding's, for a bet!” cried Rob. ”Here, Tubby, take the wheel a minute, while I put the gla.s.ses on her.”
The lad stood up in the heaving motor craft, steadying himself against the bulwarks by his knees, and peered through his marine-gla.s.ses.
”It's the hydroplane, sure enough,” he said. ”By ginger, but she can go, all right! Sam and Jack and Bill are all in her. They seem to be heading right out to sea, too.”
”Say!” exclaimed Tubby suddenly, ”if it comes on to blow, as the captain said it would, they'll be in a bad fix, won't they?”
”In that ther shoe-box thing,” scornfully exclaimed the old captain, who had also been looking through the gla.s.ses, ”why, I wouldn't give a confederate dollar bill with a hole in it fer their lives.”
CHAPTER III
BOY SCOUTS TO THE RESCUE
”Hadn't we better put back and warn them?” suggested Merritt rather anxiously, for he was alarmed by the confident manner in which the old seaman prophesied certain disaster to the hydroplane if the weather freshened.
”No; see, she's heading toward us. I guess they want a race,” cried Rob. ”We'll slow down a bit and let them catch up.”
In a few moments the hydroplane was alongside. The yellow hood over her powerful engines glistened with the wet of the great bow-wave her speed had occasioned, and her powerful motor was exhausting with a roar like a battery of machine guns.
Crouched aft of the engine hood was Sam Redding, who held the wheel.
Jack Curtiss and Bill Bender were in the stern. They sat tandem-wise in the narrow racing sh.e.l.l.
”Want a tow rope for that old stone dray of yours?” jeered Jack Curtiss, as the speedy little racer ranged alongside.
He did not know that the Flying Fish was slowed down, and that although the hydroplane appeared to be capable of tremendous speed, she was not actually so very much faster than Rob's boat.
”Say, you fellows,” warned Rob, making a trumpet of his hands, ”the captain says it's coming on to blow before long. You'd better get back into the inlet with that craft of yours.”
”Save your breath to cool your coffee,” shouted Sam Redding back at him, across the fifty feet or so of water that lay between the two boats. ”We know what we are about.”
”But you're risking your lives,” shouted Merritt. ”That thing wouldn't live ten minutes in any kind of a sea.”
”Well, we're not such a bunch of old women as to be scared of a little wetting,” jeered Jack Curtiss. ”So long! We've got no time to wait for that old tub of yours.”