“I wonder if we’re going to have visitors or any trouble?” mused Joe. “Somehow I can’t empty my head of that talk in the car this afternoon.”
“If we do have any trouble,” laughed Tom nodding down at the dog dozing on the deck at their feet, “I’ve a private notion that we’re going to be able to pass some back—to someone.”
Twenty minutes later the motor boat chums had made up berths on the engine-room lockers and had undressed and gone to bed. Both were soon sound asleep. They relied on Bouncer, who lay on the deck just outside the open hatchway, to let them know if anything threatening happened.
CHAPTER II—BOUNCER WAKES UP
While our two young motor boat enthusiasts lie wrapped in the first sound slumber of the summer night, lulled into unconsciousness by the soft lapping of the salt water against the sides of the “Meteor,” let us take a brief glimpse at the events which had brought them here.
Readers of the preceding volume in this series are aware of how the Motor Boat Club came to be organized. It now numbered fourteen members, any one of whom was fully qualified to handle a motor boat expertly under any ordinary circumstances.
Every member was a boy born and brought up along the seacoast. Such boys, both by inheritance and experience, are usually well qualified for salt-water work. They are aboard of boats almost from the first days of life that they can recollect. Seamanship and the work required about marine machinery are in the air that surrounds their daily lives. It is from among such boys that our merchant marine and our Navy find their best recruit material. It was among such boys that broker George Prescott had conceived the idea of finding material for making young experts to serve the owners of motor cruisers and racers along the New England coast.
Tom and Joe were undoubtedly the pick of the club for skill and experience. More than that, they were such fast friends that they could work together without the least danger of friction. Though Halstead was looked upon as the captain, he never attempted to lord it over his chum; they worked together as equals in everything.
Mr. Dunstan had long known Mr. Prescott in Boston, where both had offices. So, when trouble happened in the “Meteor’s” engine room, Mr. Dunstan had sent the broker a long telegram asking that gentleman to send by the next train the two most capable experts of the Club. He had added that he wanted the boys principally for running the boat on fast time between Nantucket and Wood’s Hole, for the owner had a handsome residence on the island, but came over to the mainland nearly every day in order to run in by train to his offices in Boston. The “Meteor,” therefore, was generally required to justify her name in the way of speed, for Mr. Dunstan’s landing place at Nantucket was some thirty-five miles from Wood’s Hole.
Further, Mr. Dunstan’s telegram had intimated that he was likely to want the young men for the balance of the season, though his message had not committed him absolutely on that point. The pay he had offered was more than satisfactory.