Glad to do anything to help out, Hiram hastened on this errand. He was below about ten minutes. When he returned on deck his face was white, and he was breathing quickly. Tubby’s quick eye noted, too, that the lad was wet to the waist.
“What’s up below?” he demanded.
“The cabin’s half full of water, and it seems to be rising every minute;” was the disquieting reply.
At the same instant the sloop’s motion stopped and she began rolling in a sickening fashion in the troughs of the mighty seas.
“Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Scout Hopkins, “we’re in for it now. The water’s reached the engine and it’s stopped!”
As he spoke a gigantic mountain of green water suddenly towered right above the helpless sloop. Its crest seemed to overtop the mast tip. Automatically Tubby crouched low and reached out a hand for Hiram.
The next instant the wave swept down on them enveloping the lads in a turmoil of salt water. The two boys were swept away in the liquid avalanche like feathers before a gale.
When the wave had passed, the wreck of the sloop could be seen staggering and wallowing like a stricken thing. But of her two recent occupants there was no trace upon the wilderness of heaving waters.
CHAPTER X.
A RESCUE AND A BIVOUAC.
From the bow of the Algonquin Rob kept his eyes riveted on the spot at which he had seen the sloop vanish. But for some time he could see nothing but the billowing crests of the waves. Suddenly, to his astonishment, from the midst of the combing summits, there was revealed the swaying mast of the sloop, cutting great arcs dizzily across the lowering sky.