“But they’re heading straight for the Point where the Collins Castle is located, you notice, Rob, so I guess Cap. Jerry is ferrying him across. I only hope the old tub doesn’t take a notion to founder before it gets to the dock a mile away from here.”
“Oh! it’s stood lots of pounding, and only has to be bailed out frequently on account of leaking like a sieve,” Rob said in a low tone. “Jerry has all that down to a fine point, and just once in so often he gets busy and lowers the bilge water with the pump he keeps rigged handy.”
“Excuse me from running around in such a trap,” muttered Andy, who was rather inclined to be “fussy” with regard to everything he handled, and tried to have his possessions kept up to top-notch condition—what he himself called “apple-pie shape.”
“The professor is like most Englishmen, for he loves his pipe,” remarked Rob, as he watched the passenger aboard the old launch filling his little black pipe with tobacco taken from a rubber pouch. “I hope, when he strikes that match, and then throws it away after lighting up, he knows enough about motorboats to see that it goes overboard, and not into the bottom of the craft. Sometimes a leak will spread a film of gasolene over the bilge water, and there’s always more or less danger of an explosion.”
“Yes,” added Andy seriously, “there have been a number on the bay the last three seasons, and two people that I can remember were so badly burned that they died after being rescued.”
Both of the boys watched with more or less interest, and possibly with suspended breath, while the red-faced passenger in Captain Jerry’s old launch puffed several times at his pipe, then tossed the match aside.
“Oh! it didn’t go overboard, for a fact, Rob!” gasped Andy; but there was no time to say another word, for suddenly they saw a flash of flame spring up aboard the old Sea Gull, and in an instant it seemed as though the launch was aflame from stem to stern!
Suddenly they saw a flash of flame spring up aboard the old Sea Gull.