“I’m afraid the captain would toss everything overboard if he found us loading up with such stuff,” laughed Oscar. “The boat is crowded as it is; and what little space they have left is for something worth a heap more than just marine shells, and such junk.”
From down below could be heard the clinking sound of hammers as the engineer and his assistant worked at the engine to put it in better condition for business. The day was sultry and both boys felt relieved that these clouds mercifully stood between the pitiless rays of the sun and themselves.
“We must be getting somewhere near our first stop,” remarked Oscar, after another little spell had gone by; “for I saw the skipper overhauling his charts this morning, and that looked like business.”
“None of us will be sorry,” Jack went on to say, “because we’re fairly wild to learn what it really looks like down there among the sea ferns, and the queer forests they say grow on the bottom of the ocean. Then again there are all kinds of queer monsters that you’re likely to come on, most of them never seen near the surface. Oh! I’m clear daffy with wanting to click off some of those sights.”
Just then the captain came up the ladder again. Oscar was about to ask some question that had occurred to him when he held his tongue. The skipper was seen to shade his eyes with his hand, and stare earnestly toward the shore. Ballyhoo was still almost a third of the way across the open water lying between the boat and the palms.
Then they heard Captain Shooks utter an exclamation. It thrilled them both, and brought them to their feet, as though touched by a galvanic battery.
Turning swiftly, the skipper snatched up the megaphone that had been lying close by, and this he raised to his mouth.
Across the water his heavy voice rang like the brazen notes of an alarm bell.
“Sharks! Ahoy, Ballyhoo, swim for the boat, lad, swim for the boat!”
And looking beyond the spot where their chum was idly floating on his back, Oscar and Jack caught sight of an ugly black fin cutting the water in eccentric curves.