“You’re a brick!” Vance exclaimed enthusiastically. “Bring the raft ashore so we can go on board.”
“That is exactly what I propose to do,” Ned replied as he clambered over the rail. “There isn’t a breath of air stirrin’, an’ if we pull her around into the bay now, it’ll give us an appetite for breakfast.”
“Do you think we can do it with that raft?”
“Hold on!” and Ned clambered back to the deck again. “We’ll run a line ashore, and with one haulin’ on that, while the other two row the raft, I reckon it won’t be so very much of a job.”
“Go ahead and fix things in any way you see fit,” Roy cried encouragingly. “You’ve shown yourself the captain of this crowd, and from now out Vance and I will obey orders without a word. Eh, Vance?”
“Well, I should say so! If it hadn’t been for him we should have left the poor little Zoe on the bank until a storm came and knocked her to pieces.”
Ned was decidedly well pleased by these words of praise, but he took good care not to show it.
It delighted him that his companions should thus voluntarily give him credit for having engineered the work successfully, and he was resolved she should be taken into port in good condition, if such a thing was possible.
A line, made fast to the capstan, was soon carried ashore and given in charge of Roy, while Ned took Vance back with him to the yacht.
Then it was simply a matter of hard work to pull the steamer around, and before nine o’clock that morning she was moored in the little bay ready to receive once more the goods which had been taken ashore.