"Davis told me while you were trying to get something out of those fellows who were all gabbling at once."
"And when you have closed up the sea-cocks?"
"Then I shall start the centrifugal pumps going to empty the engine-room, and we'll soon have her as sound as a dollar."
Luckily the water had not, as Frank had surmised, reached the fires, and though low there was enough pressure of steam to run the pumps till the boys were able to work in the stoke-hold. Then both boys set to work with a will and soon had the furnaces going full-blast, and the steam gauges registered seventy, then eighty and then one hundred and fifty pounds.
"There, that will do," exclaimed Frank, as, pretty well tuckered out, they threw aside their shovels. "Now we have to wait for the tide and reinforcements."
They had not long to wait.
Of course at the height the tide now was the reef was pretty well covered and it would have been impossible to make a landing in the air-ship, so Billy had chartered the power launch of the friend who had sold them the gasoline.
Ben Stubbs and Sikaso, who had arrived late that' afternoon, were on board the little craft and Ben's loud "Ahoy!" brought the Boy Aviators to the rail on the jump—waving and shouting greetings.
But there were others in the launch, and among them the boys spied several faces of bronzed men who looked thorough seamen. M. Desplaines, who was in the launch, explained that they had formed part of the crew of a steamer that had been wrecked down the coast some weeks previously. They had been waiting for a ship and were willing to work their passage home: to New York. Among them was their captain, a good seaman and a former yacht skipper.
"But—but," said Frank amazedly, as the men piled on board and the boys all shook hands madly with everybody. "We can't take this yacht—it isn't ours, we have no right."