"Found the place where the water came in, have you, Rob?" called Tubby, who was hefting the sack of bivalves, and perhaps secretly wondering whether it might not make their labor of transporting the same to the Blake house easier if they proceeded to discard a few of the shells and partake of the juicy contents.
"Why, it's a round hole, I tell you!" shouted Rob.
"What's that you're giving us?" demanded Andy. "I've seen some queer things happen to boats, but that's the first time I ever knew one to spring a leak with a round hole. Are you joshing us, Rob?"
"I tell you it's as round as a quarter, and about as big into the bargain!" continued the other vigorously. "And what's more, this boat never sprung a leak!"
"Oh! say, p'raps now a sword fish rammed his beak through her planks!" ejaculated Tubby, who could always be depended on to think up the most extraordinary explanation possible when anything out of the ordinary happened.
All of the other scouts had now crawled back on the boat, their curiosity having been fully aroused by the strange announcement made by Rob. Merritt even insisted on feeling down in the water, and thrusting his forefinger through the said hole.
"Jiggered if what Rob says isn't so, boys," he called out; "because I've got my finger all the way through the hole right now! Why, it's as smooth as if it had been made with an inch bit. Take my word for it, that's the truth!"
"And I've got a good notion that was what did make it!" Rob observed solemnly; at which Tubby gasped, opening his mouth in the queer way he had of doing when greatly astonished.
"You mean somebody went and bored a hole right through the planks of your boat, do you, Rob?" he asked excitedly. "But why didn't the water rush in before, when we've been more than a whole hour sailing?"
"Why, you silly," cried Andy, "of course it must have had a plug in the hole! It was probably fixed so that sooner or later it just had to be jarred loose, and the pressure of the water outside would push the same in. That was what happened when we made our last turn. And this same old plug must have been hidden under the false bottom, which none of us thought to pull up till she floated loose!"