“You did,” answered Gif. “We were spotted by the cook.”
“And we dropped him down the hatchway over there,” added Spouter.
“Good for you, lads! Good for you! Now come on—there ain’t no time to lose. That fellow hangin’ over the wheel may rouse up at any moment. Besides that, it’s almost time for the next man to take his trick.”
Once more Ira Small led the way to the stern of the Hildegarde. There the other boys found that Jack and Ralph had provided themselves with a number of short pieces of rope.
“We’re going to loop each of the oil cans fast to the cable leading down to the motor boat,” explained Ralph. “You might as well loop all your bundles also. Of course, a good deal of it will get wet, but that can’t be helped. We can’t get it to the boat any other way while we’re riding through these swells. We’ll be lucky to get on the boat ourselves.”
While the boys were looping the last of their bundles fast to the cable where, one after another, the bundles began to slide down from the stern of the schooner toward the motor boat, Ira Small drew back.
“I’ll be with you in a couple o’ minutes,” he said. “You fellows kin follow the stuff down the cable if you want to. But don’t cut it—I’ll do that myself as soon as you’re safe on board and have salvaged the stuff.”
The sailor disappeared in the semi-darkness, and one after another the boys crawled over the stern of the Hildegarde and caught hold of the cable leading down over the ocean to where the motor boat rested. Fortunately, both wind and waves had calmed down considerably, so that the schooner was making but little headway.
It was no easy matter for the boys to reach the motor boat, and they would have had great difficulty in getting aboard had it not been that Captain Gilsen had left an arrangement on the craft so that a sailor from the Hildegarde might get on board whenever it was deemed necessary. This was a sort of rope ladder left across the bow with a line running from the cabin top to the cable just above the water line. Floundering around in the waves and the darkness, one after another of the boys slid along the cable and finally managed to reach the motor boat. The last to come aboard was Jack, and it must be confessed that he was almost spent with his exertions.