“Hurray!” breathed Frank, inhaling a great lungful of fresh air. “Now I can at least make a racket, and maybe that will bring some one.”
With all his might he began shouting for help. In the still morning air his voice carried clearly across the water, and to the lad’s huge delight it was not long before he perceived, coming toward him a small fishing boat, which, from the “chugging” sound it made, was evidently furnished with a gasolene engine.
But the question that now agitated the boy was, “Would they see him or hear his voice above the loud noise of the motor?” If they did not, Frank realized that his plight would pass from a serious to a desperate state, for the barrel was, by this time, caught in a current which was rapidly increasing the distance between himself and the shore.
To his intense relief, however, he saw the fishing boat suddenly change her course, and before long she was close enough for him to read the name “Two Sisters” on her broad, bluff bow.
“Waal, by the tarnal!” came a gruff voice, “who and what are yer out here in a ba’rl?”
The speaker, a burly-looking fellow, with a rough but kindly countenance, regarded Frank’s face, which was all that was visible of him, with the most intense astonishment, as well he might. In a long experience off shore, covering all sorts of adventures, Captain Elihu Carney of the Two Sisters had never before beheld a floating barrel with a human head projecting from it.
“It’s a kid—a boy!” shouted one of his mates from the stern of the Two Sisters, where he held the tiller.
“Crack-e-e! so it air. Hey, kid, what yer doin’ out here? Takin’ a cruise, or is this one of them new-fangled health cures?”
“It’s neither, I assure you,” cried Frank; “get me out of this and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’ll run alongside and you can climb out.”