“Why don’t you try to steer, or crank her?” he yelled to Dent.
“What’s the use?” asked the lazy lad indifferently.
“Use? Lots of use? Do you want to go on the rocks?”
“No, not exactly,” spoke Dent, and his voice was quicker than his usual slow tones, as he saw his danger. “But you’ll be here in a minute, and you can run things.”
“Yes, that’s just like you,” retorted Tom. “You want someone else to do the work, while you sit around. But I’ll make you row back, and pull the boat too, if I can’t get her going.”
“Oh, Tom, I never could pull this boat back.”
“You’ll have to,” declared our hero grimly, “that is if the engine won’t run. Stand by now, to catch my painter.”
Dent stood up in the stern of the drifting motorboat, and prepared to catch the line Tom was about to throw to him. Tom was near enough to his motorcraft now so that the headway and the current of the river would carry him to her.
“I hope I can get that engine going,” he remarked to himself, as he saw how dangerously near he was to the rocks.