“There; now it’s for the tide to do the rest. If it helps us as much as it did last night, we shan’t have to work a very long while in order to get her into the bay. Now we’ll rig something to shore her up on this side, and that will come pretty near finishing the day.”
He set about this portion of the work with such zeal and determination that the others, urged on by their fear caused by the noises heard on the previous night, were soon laboring with feverish eagerness, and before the tide had turned all had been done that was possible until the hawsers should need tautening once more.
“Now we can afford to rest,” Ned said as he walked slowly toward the tent, wiping the perspiration from his face.
“And it’s high time,” Roy replied with a laugh. “It plays a fellow out mighty fast to keep at a job when the weather is so very warm. I don’t believe I should ever make a very good citizen for this part of the country.”
“Why not?”
“Because the heat pulls me down so severely.”
“You would soon get accustomed to working in the early morning and late at night,” Vance replied. “That is the way people do in the tropics.”
“I notice you don’t take kindly to turning out so very early,” Roy replied as, they having arrived at the tent, he flung himself upon one of the mattresses.
“But it is most likely I should if I got in the habit of indulging in a siesta every noon, the same as we saw those fellows at Key West.”
Ned took no part in this conversation. He had followed Roy’s example, so far as lying down was concerned, but his mind was fully occupied trying to devise some means for floating the Zoe more quickly than it could be done by waiting for the tide to pull her off the shore.