Badly weakened and unnerved by his experience he was pulled on board and laid on a bunk in the cabin, where restoratives were administered to him.
It was late in the evening before he was himself again, and he then explained how he had been idly twisting the line in and out of a hook on his belt when there came a sudden tug. Before he knew what was happening he found himself rushing through the air and was then immersed. Fortunately, he was a good swimmer and kept his head or there might have been a more serious termination to his adventure.
"How big do you think that shark was, Billy Barnes?" Frank could not help asking him mischievously later in the evening.
"Oh, at least fifty feet," was the young reporter's reply, delivered in all seriousness.
CHAPTER XVIII.
INTO THE SARGASSO.
The days slipped rapidly by until one fine morning, about a week after the events narrated in our last chapter, Ben Stubbs and Frank announced that their observations showed that they had doubled the southernmost cape of Florida (which had been the scene of some earlier thrilling adventures described in the second volume of this series, "The Boy Aviators on Secret Service"), and were now on a direct course for the mysterious region of the Sargasso Sea. For three days more they went steadily onward toward the rising sun, occasionally sighting a school of porpoises and scaring up whole legions of flying-fish with their sharp bow. The days were glorious—a trifle hot, perhaps, but none of the boys minded that; and at night the stars, "as big as lamps," Billy declared they looked in the far southern latitude they had now reached, gave almost as much light as the moon in our chilly northern clime.
Every day, now, some one of the party took turns with the glasses under a small shelter erected with canvas and oars in the bow of the boat, and painstakingly scanned the horizon all about for any sight of the Brigand or Luther Barr's dirigible. But although once or twice they saw distant smoke, it always turned out to be a false alarm, and they hourly grew nearer the Sargasso without having made out a trace of the rival treasure-hunters. This fact put them all in high spirits, and each of the boys was already busy building lofty air-castles concerning what he would do with the treasure when he got it.
Much of the time, too, was occupied in clearing away the lashings of the planes and other apparatus and parts of the Golden Eagle attached to the cabin top forward, and discussing plans to erect her at sea. Frank perhaps was the only one of the party who fully realized the extreme difficulties that confronted them. However, the water was at present smooth as glass almost and seemed likely to remain so, if Bluewater Bill and Ben Stubbs were to be relied on as weather prophets.
"We are getting into the Doldrums now for fair," the old sailor announced one morning, pointing to the horizon, where a big, full-rigged vessel lay motionless in the breathless atmosphere. "That ship yonder may not get out of here for a week."