Looking about hastily for means to plug the hole, Tom offered a jacket he had picked up from the locker. Arnold seized a fid from another locker. Harry shut his eyes, turned his head side-wise and gasped for breath. Reaching out for the jacket he took it from the hand of his friend and tried to push it into the hole through which the water was pouring steadily. His efforts were fruitless.
"Here, take this," urged Arnold. "This fid will plug a big hole and jam it tight, too. Is it a butt started?"
Harry took the fid from his chum. Quickly he inserted the pointed end into the hole he had been trying to cover with his hand.
"Give me a hammer or something to knock with and I'll try to drive this into the hole. It's not a butt, it's an auger hole!"
"An auger hole?" both boys gasped in horror.
"An auger hole!" repeated Harry, his lips set and white. "Just a little more and we'd have been beyond all help. I think this idea of helping unfortunate castaways is getting to be a good thing."
"Why, who on earth could have been so cold-blooded as to have bored a hole in our vessel?" cried Arnold. "Surely it wasn't the man whose life we just saved a short time ago!"
"I came into this cabin," asserted Harry "and could hear the rush of water. I thought the leak must be here. Of course, I thought at first that we had started a butt in the rolling a while back, when our friend Carlos Sneakodorus Madero boarded us and left us."
"But that seems impossible," incredulously offered Tom. "The Fortuna was built at Manitowoc where they have a reputation of doing first class work and she hasn't had rough handling at all."
"It was impossible!" cried Harry. "Just as I knelt to raise the floor board I saw that auger lying there. Then as I raised the board, I saw a handful of white chips float up through the hole."