Chapter 16

LOST IN THE STORM

"The trouble's in the reversible propeller. I always told Rob he was foolish not to have a regular reverse gear on the shaft itself and a solid wheel," said Merritt.

"Well, never mind that now," urged Tubby anxiously. "I'll shift all the cushions and stuff up in the bow, and Hiram and I will get as far forward as we can. That will raise the stern and you can hang over and reach the wheel."

When the stout lad had done as he suggested there was quite a perceptible tilt forward to the Flying Fish, and Merritt, hanging over the stern, could feel about the propeller better.

"Just as I thought," he shouted presently. "That shark when he came astern fouled that heavy line on the propeller."

He got out his knife, and in a few minutes succeeded in cutting the entangling line free.

It was not any too soon. From far off there came a low sound, something like the moaning of a large animal in pain. It grew louder and closer, and with it came an advancing wall of water crested with white foam. The sky, too, grew black, and air filled with a sort of sulphurous smell.

"It's a thunder squall," shouted Tubby, as Merritt shoved over the lever and started the engine.

As he spoke there came a low growl of thunder and the sky was illumined with a livid glare.

"Here she comes!" yelled Merritt; "better get out those slickers or we'll be soaked."

Tubby opened a locker and produced the yellow waterproof coats. The boys had hardly thrust their arms into them before the big sea struck them. Thanks to Tubby's steering, however, the Flying Fish met it without shipping more than a few cupfuls of water.

The next minute the full fury of the storm enveloped the Boy Scouts and the Flying Fish was laboring in a heaving wilderness of lashed and tumbling water.

"Keep her head up!" roared Merritt, above the screaming of the wind and the now almost continuous roar and rattle of the thunder. It grew almost dark, so overcast was the sky, and under the somber, driving cloud wrack the white wave crests gleamed like savage teeth.

Hiram crouched on the bottom of the boat, too terrified to speak, while Tubby and Merritt strove desperately to keep the little craft from "broaching to," in which case she would have shipped more water than would have been at all convenient, not to say safe.

As if it were some vindictive live thing, seized with a sudden spite against the boat and its occupants, the storm roared about the dazed boys.

The Flying Fish, however, rode the sweeping seas gallantly, breasting even the biggest combers bravely and buoyantly.

"It's getting worse," shouted Tubby, gazing back at Merritt, who was bending over the laboring motor.

"Yes, you bet it is!" roared back the engineer; "and I'm afraid of a short circuit if this rain keeps up."

"Cover up the engine with that spare slicker," suggested Tubby.

"That's a good idea," responded the other, rummaging in a stern locker and producing the garment in question. In another moment he had it over the engine, protecting the spark plugs and the high-tension wires from the rain and spray. But the wind was too high to permit of the covering remaining unfastened, and with a ball of marlin the young engineer lashed the improvised motor cover firmly in place.

Hiram, with a white face, now crawled up from the bottom of the boat. In addition to being scared, he was seasick from the eccentric motions of the storm-tossed craft.

"Do you think we'll ever get ashore again?" he asked, crawling to Merritt's side.

"Sure," responded the corporal confidently. "'Come on, buck up, Hiram! You know, a Boy Scout never says die. We'll be back in camp in three hours' time, when this squall blows itself out."

"I--I don't want you to think me a coward, Merritt," quavered Hiram, "but--but you know this is enough to scare any fellow."

Indeed, he seemed right. The Flying Fish appeared no more than a tiny chip on the immense rollers the storm had blown up. Time and again it looked as if she would never be able to climb the huge walls of green water that towered above her; but every time she did, and, as the storm raged on, the confidence of the boys began to grow.

"She'll ride it out, Tubby!" yelled Merritt, dousing the engine with more oil.

"Sure she will!" yelled back Tubby, with a confidence that was, however, largely assumed. The stout youth had just been assailed by an alarming thought that flashed across his mind.

"Would the gasoline hold out?"

There was no opportunity on the plunging, bucking craft to examine the tank, and all the boy could do was to make a rapid mental calculation, based on what he knew of the consumption of the engine. The tank, he knew, had been half full when they came out, and that, under ordinary conditions, would have sufficed to drive the Flying Fish for five or six hours.

But they were not ordinary conditions under which she was now laboring. Tubby knew that Merritt was piling in every ounce of gasoline the carburetor could take care of.

Suddenly, while the stout youth's mind was busied with these thoughts, and without the slightest warning, there came a sort of wheezing gasp from the motor.

Merritt leaned over it in alarm. He seized the timing lever and shoved it over and opened the gasoline cock full tilt.

But there was no response from the motor.

It gasped out a cough a couple of times and turned over in a dying fashion for a few revolutions and then stopped dead.

The boys were adrift in the teeth of the storm in a crippled boat.

"What's the matter?" roared back Tubby from the wheel. "She's lost steerage way!"

"Motor's gone dead," howled back Merritt laconically.

"Great Scott, we are in for it now! What's the matter?"

"No gasolene," yelled Merritt.

"Sosh-osh-soh!"

A huge green wave climbed on to the Flying Fish's bow, shaking her from stem to stern like a terrier shakes a rat.

"We've got to do something quick, or we'll be swamped!" roared Merritt.

"The cockpit cover, quick!" shouted Tubby, steadying himself in the bucking craft by a tight grasp on the bulwarks.

"That's it. Now the oars. Hurry up. Here, you Hiram, grab that can and bail for all you're worth!"

The fat youth seemed transformed by the sudden emergency into the most active of beings.

"What are you going to do?" yelled Merritt, framing his mouth with his hands.

"Make a spray hood. Come forward here and give me a hand."

With the oars the two boys made a sort of arched framework, secured with ropes, and over it spread the canvas cockpit cover, lashing it down to the forward and side cleats. This work was not unattended with danger and difficulty. Time and again as they worked the boys had to lie flat on their stomachs and hang on while the Flying Fish leaped a wave like a horse taking a barrier. At last, however, their task was completed, and the improvised spray hood served to some extent to break the waves that now threatened momentarily to engulf the laboring craft.

"Now to get out a sea anchor!" shouted the indefatigable Tubby.

He seized up an old bait tub, a boat hook and a "swabbing-out" broom, and lashed them all together in a sort of bridle. Then he attached the Flying Fish's mooring cable to the contrivance and paid it out for a hundred feet or more, while the storm-battered craft drifted steadily backward. Instead, however, of lying beam on to the big sea, she now headed up into them, the "drag," as it is sometimes called, serving to keep her bow swung up to the threatening combers.

"There, she'll ride for a while, anyhow," breathed Tubby, when this was done.

"What's to be done now?" shouted Merritt in his car.

"Nothing," was the response; "we've got to lie here till this thing blows over."

"It's breaking a little to the south now," exclaimed Merritt, pointing to where a rift began to appear in the solid cloud curtain.

This was cheering news, and even the seasick but plucky Hiram, who had been bailing for all he was worth, despite his misery, began to cheer up.

"Hurrah! I guess the worst of our troubles are over," cried Tubby. "It certainly looks as if the sea was beginning to go down, and the wind has dropped, I'm sure."

That this was the case became apparent shortly. There was a noticeable decrease in the size and height of the waves and the wind abated in proportion. In half an hour after the rift had been first noticed by Merritt, the black squall had passed, and the late afternoon sun began to shine in a pallid way through the driving cloud masses.

The lads, however, were still in a serious fix. They had been driven so far out to sea that the land was blotted out altogether. All about them was only the still heaving Atlantic. The sun, too, was westering fast, and it would not be long before darkness fell.

Without gasoline and with no sail, they had no means of making land. Worse still, they were in the track of the in and out-bound steamers to and from New York--according to Tubby's reckoning--and they had no lights.

"Well, we seem to have got out of the frying pan into the fire," said Merritt in a troubled voice. "It's the last time I'll ever come out without lights and a mast and sail."

"That's what they all say," observed Tubby grimly. "The thing to do now is to get back to shore somehow. Maybe we can rig up a sail with the cockpit cover and the oars. We've got to try it, anyhow."

After hauling in the sea anchor, the lads set to work to rig up and lash the oars into an A shape. The canvas was lashed to each of the arms of the A, and the contrivance then set up and secured to the fore and aft cleats by the mooring line they had utilized for the sea anchor.

"Well," remarked Tubby, as he surveyed his handiwork with some satisfaction and pride, "we can go before the wind now, anyhow--even if we do look like a lost, strayed or stolen Chinese junk."

"Say, I'm so hungry I could eat one of those fish raw!" exclaimed Hiram, now quite recovered, as the Flying Fish, under her clumsy sail, began to stagger along in the direction in which Tubby believed the land lay, the wind fortunately being dead aft.

"Great Scott, the kid's right!" exclaimed Merritt. "We forgot all about eating in the gloom but now I believe I could almost follow Hiram's lead and eat some of those fellows as they are."

"Well, that's about all you'll get to eat for a long time," remarked Tubby, grimly casting an anxious eye aloft at the filling "sail."