"Better look before you leap, Rex."
"Pshaw! As our Blackport friend says, 'There's nothing to it!' We can reach 'em all right—without shipping a capful of water."
"Yes," Midkiff muttered. "But can we get back to the island again?"
Kingdon did not answer that question. He knew he had a sound craft under him. A catboat of merely the Spoondrift's length has run many a mile out to sea and lived through an offshore gale; but it wasn't a chance he fancied, and Kingdon fully felt the responsibility of taking the risk. Nevertheless, he could not think of letting those other fellows drown.
Drown they might unless they received immediate aid. Under the lift of the boom, Rex caught a glimpse of the two canoes. One fellow in each was paddling madly while his companion was bailing out the water shipped from the curling top of every wave.
It was a bad outlook for Horace Pence and his friends. Undoubtedly they had been fishing off the eastern point of Storm Island when the wind shifted. If that was so, then for nearly two hours the boys had been battling to get back to safety.
"Careless goats," Kingdon said to Midkiff, who stood beside him. "They ought never to have brought such dinky craft out here. Canoes are all right in the sound when it's quiet; but to try to manage a canoe out here, with the surf running the way it does on this south shore of Storm Island, is craziness."
"Guess they know all that now," grunted Midkiff.
"True for you, Jawn. Stand by to give them a hand. Save the canoes if you can. I've got to run her in between the two, and you and Red will each have to handle one of the cockleshells."
"Cockleshells. Now you've said a bushel, Rex," Midkiff rejoined. "Those fellows ought to be at home sailing chips on a puddle."