“Maybe,” agreed Teddy. He kept on pushing with the crab pole, and as he did so Janet looked around for a sight of some other boats that might come to aid the Curlytops.
Once a motor boat, with a merry party in it, passed not very far off. Ted and Janet raised their voices in shouts for help. But the young people in the motor boat were laughing, talking, and singing, and did not seem to hear the children calling. Or, if they did, they may have thought it was just a boy and a girl skylarking or calling for fun.
At any rate they paid no attention, but sped on, and Ted, who had given up pushing for a time, started to do so again. Once the handle of the net failed to reach bottom. Janet noticed this and said:
“It’s deeper here, isn’t it?”
“Oh, a little,” Teddy answered, for he did not want his sister to become frightened. “But it will soon be shallow again,” he added.
And this proved to be the case.
On and on drifted the Curlytops in their boat, the tide carrying them and Teddy pushing with the crab pole. The crabs in the basket were quiet now, under their covering of seaweed.
“I wish we had a basket of apples instead of a basket of crabs,” murmured Janet, after a time.
“Why?” Teddy wanted to know.
“So I could eat one.”