“Then hoist the sail, by all means!” cried Tom.
It was no easy work to chop out a rude mast from one of the planks, set it upright and bend a sail to it, made from the canvas shelter. But they did it at last. Then a rudder was made from another plank—a crude and unsatisfactory affair but which served in a measure to guide the derelict.
The canvas was hoisted. Its end was made fast. It filled with wind, flapped and then bellied out.
“Hurray!” cried Tom in delight.
“We’re under sail!” shouted Abe.
“And now to lay a course,” added Joe. “Maybe we can get somewhere with this ship after all.”
[CHAPTER XIV]
DREARY DAYS
Like some castaways on a desert island, when they have discovered a sail in the distance, so it was with Tom and the others when they found that their water-logged craft was really making headway with the rude sail they had hoisted. It seemed to them that now they could really navigate to some place where they would be saved from death at sea.