CHAPTER XVI
LOST IN THE STORM
"The trouble's in the reversible propeller. I always told Rob he wasfoolish not to have a regular reverse gear on the shaft itself and asolid wheel," said Merritt.
"Well, never mind that now," urged Tubby anxiously. "I'll shift allthe cushions and stuff up in the bow, and Hiram and I will get as farforward as we can. That will raise the stern and you can hang over andreach the wheel."
When the stout lad had done as he suggested there was quite aperceptible tilt forward to the Flying Fish, and Merritt, hanging overthe stern, could feel about the propeller better.
"Just as I thought," he shouted presently. "That shark when he cameastern fouled that heavy line on the propeller."
He got out his knife, and in a few minutes succeeded in cutting theentangling 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 louderand closer, and with it came an advancing wall of water crested withwhite foam. The sky, too, grew black, and air filled with a sort ofsulphurous smell.
"It's a thunder squall," shouted Tubby, as Merritt shoved over thelever and started the engine.
As he spoke there came a low growl of thunder and the sky was illuminedwith a livid glare.
"Here she comes!" yelled Merritt; "better get out those slickers orwe'll be soaked."
Tubby opened a locker and produced the yellow waterproof coats. Theboys had hardly thrust their arms into them before the big sea struckthem. Thanks to Tubby's steering, however, the Flying Fish met itwithout shipping more than a few cupfuls of water.
The next minute the full fury of the storm enveloped the Boy Scouts andthe Flying Fish was laboring in a heaving wilderness of lashed andtumbling water.
"Keep her head up!" roared Merritt, above the screaming of the wind andthe now almost continuous roar and rattle of the thunder. It grewalmost dark, so overcast was the sky, and under the somber, drivingcloud wrack the white wave crests gleamed like savage teeth.
Hiram crouched on the bottom of the boat, too terrified to speak, whileTubby and Merritt strove desperately to keep the little craft from"broaching to," in which case she would have shipped more water thanwould have been at all convenient, not to say safe.
As if it were some vindictive live thing, seized with a sudden spiteagainst the boat and its occupants, the storm roared about the dazedboys.
The Flying Fish, however, rode the sweeping seas gallantly, breastingeven the biggest combers bravely and buoyantly.
"It's getting worse," shouted Tubby, gazing back at Merritt, who wasbending over the laboring motor.
"Yes, you bet it is!" roared back the engineer; "and I'm afraid of ashort 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 lockerand producing the garment in question. In another moment he had it overthe engine, protecting the spark plugs and the high-tension wires fromthe rain and spray. But the wind was too high to permit of thecovering remaining unfastened, and with a ball of marlin the youngengineer 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 motionsof the storm-tossed craft.
"Do you think we'll ever get ashore again?" he asked, crawling toMerritt'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 threehours' 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 tinychip on the immense rollers the storm had blown up. Time and again itlooked as if she would never be able to climb the huge walls of greenwater that towered above her; but every time she did, and, as the stormraged on, the confidence of the boys began to grow.
"She'll ride it out, Tubby!" yelled Merritt, dousing the engine withmore oil.
"Sure she will!" yelled back Tubby, with a confidence that was,however, largely assumed. The stout youth had just been assailed by analarming thought that flashed across his mind.
"Would the gasoline hold out?"
There was no opportunity on the plunging, bucking craft to examine thetank, 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, heknew, had been half full when they came out, and that, under ordinaryconditions, would have sufficed to drive the Flying Fish for five orsix hours.
But they were not ordinary conditions under which she was now laboring.Tubby knew that Merritt was piling in every ounce of gasoline thecarburetor 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 gaspfrom the motor.
Merritt leaned over it in alarm. He seized the timing lever and shovedit 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 dyingfashion 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 loststeerage 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 fromstem 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 thebucking craft by a tight grasp on the bulwarks.
"That's it. Now the oars. Hurry up. Here, you Hiram, grab that can andbail for all you're worth!"
The fat youth seemed transformed by the sudden emergency into the mostactive of beings.
"What are you going to do?" yelled Merritt, framing his mouth with hishands.
"Make a spray hood. Come forward here and give me a hand."
With the oars the two boys made a sort of arched framework, securedwith ropes, and over it spread the canvas cockpit cover, lashing itdown to the forward and side cleats. This work was not unattended withdanger and difficulty. Time and again as they worked the boys had tolie flat on their stomachs and hang on while the Flying Fish leaped awave like a horse taking a barrier. At last, however, their task wascompleted, and the improvised spray hood served to some extent to breakthe 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 theFlying Fish's mooring cable to the contrivance and paid it out for ahundred feet or more, while the storm-battered craft drifted steadilybackward. Instead, however, of lying beam on to the big sea, she nowheaded up into them, the "drag," as it is sometimes called, serving tokeep her bow swung up to the threatening combers.
"There, she'll ride for a while, anyhow," breathed Tubby, when this wasdone.
"What's to be done now?" shouted Merritt in his car.
"Nothing," was the response; "we've got to lie here till this thingblows over."
"It's breaking a little to the south now," exclaimed Merritt, pointingto where a rift began to appear in the solid cloud curtain.
This was cheering news, and even the seasick but plucky Hiram, who hadbeen bailing for all he was worth, despite his misery, began to cheerup.
"Hurrah! I guess the worst of our troubles are over," cried T
ubby."It certainly looks as if the sea was beginning to go down, and thewind has dropped, I'm sure."
That this was the case became apparent shortly. There was a noticeabledecrease in the size and height of the waves and the wind abated inproportion. In half an hour after the rift had been first noticed byMerritt, the black squall had passed, and the late afternoon sun beganto shine in a pallid way through the driving cloud masses.
The lads, however, were still in a serious fix. They had been drivenso far out to sea that the land was blotted out altogether. All aboutthem was only the still heaving Atlantic. The sun, too, was westeringfast, 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 toand from New York--according to Tubby's reckoning--and they had nolights.
"Well, we seem to have got out of the frying pan into the fire," saidMerritt in a troubled voice. "It's the last time I'll ever come outwithout lights and a mast and sail."
"That's what they all say," observed Tubby grimly. "The thing to donow is to get back to shore somehow. Maybe we can rig up a sail withthe 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 andlash the oars into an A shape. The canvas was lashed to each of thearms of the A, and the contrivance then set up and secured to the foreand aft cleats by the mooring line they had utilized for the sea anchor.
"Well," remarked Tubby, as he surveyed his handiwork with somesatisfaction and pride, "we can go before the wind now, anyhow--even ifwe do look like a lost, strayed or stolen Chinese junk."
"Say, I'm so hungry I could eat one of those fish raw!" exclaimedHiram, now quite recovered, as the Flying Fish, under her clumsy sail,began to stagger along in the direction in which Tubby believed theland lay, the wind fortunately being dead aft.
"Great Scott, the kid's right!" exclaimed Merritt. "We forgot allabout eating in the gloom but now I believe I could almost followHiram'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," remarkedTubby, grimly casting an anxious eye aloft at the filling "sail."