That this was the case became apparent shortly. There was a noticeable decrease in the size and height of the waves and the wind abated in proportion. In half an hour after the rift had been first noticed by Merritt, the black squall had passed, and the late afternoon sun began to shine in a pallid way through the driving cloud masses.
The lads, however, were still in a serious fix. They had been driven so far out to sea that the land was blotted out altogether. All about them was only the still heaving Atlantic. The sun, too, was westering fast, and it would not be long before darkness fell.
Without gasoline and with no sail, they had no means of making land. Worse still, they were in the track of the in and out-bound steamers to and from New York—according to Tubby's reckoning—and they had no lights.
"Well, we seem to have got out of the frying pan into the fire," said Merritt in a troubled voice. "It's the last time I'll ever come out without lights and a mast and sail."
"That's what they all say," observed Tubby grimly. "The thing to do now is to get back to shore somehow. Maybe we can rig up a sail with the cockpit cover and the oars. We've got to try it, anyhow."
After hauling in the sea anchor, the lads set to work to rig up and lash the oars into an A shape. The canvas was lashed to each of the arms of the A, and the contrivance then set up and secured to the fore and aft cleats by the mooring line they had utilized for the sea anchor.
"Well," remarked Tubby, as he surveyed his handiwork with some satisfaction and pride, "we can go before the wind now, anyhow—even if we do look like a lost, strayed or stolen Chinese junk."
"Say, I'm so hungry I could eat one of those fish raw!" exclaimed Hiram, now quite recovered, as the Flying Fish, under her clumsy sail, began to stagger along in the direction in which Tubby believed the land lay, the wind fortunately being dead aft.
"Great Scott, the kid's right!" exclaimed Merritt. "We forgot all about eating in the gloom but now I believe I could almost follow Hiram's lead and eat some of those fellows as they are."
"Well, that's about all you'll get to eat for a long time," remarked Tubby, grimly casting an anxious eye aloft at the filling "sail."