“Of course, for then we’ll be takin’ advantage of the night tide.”
“And we shall get along much faster, because Roy will be here to help us.”
Vance hardly allowed his companions time to eat their dinner properly.
He urged first one and then the other to make more haste, until Roy said quite sharply:
“This morning you thought it was the same as wasting time to work on the yacht, and now you’re not willing to do the thing in a reasonable way. I shall eat all I want, and even then there’ll be plenty of daylight in which to accomplish as much as Ned has laid out for this day’s work.”
Vance was forced to restrain his ardor, since the others were not willing to keep at the job with such a rush, and the result was that very much more labor was performed than if he had been allowed the direction of affairs.
The raft was finally built as strongly as Ned thought necessary, and the largest anchor with plenty of cable loaded on it.
It was no slight task to paddle the unwieldy craft out to sea with the heavy hawser trailing astern, and dragging back until oftentimes more advantage would be lost than gained.
Vance assisted Ned, both using the oars as paddles, and Roy remained on the wreck to pay out the cable.
It was necessary to strain every muscle to accomplish the purpose, but it was finally done, and the boys pulled swiftly back to the yacht to ascertain, by bringing the rope to the capstan, what kind of holding ground they had.