"It will get worse before it gets better," was Tom's pithy rejoinder.
The Sea Ranger had set out from New York three weeks before. Her destination was a small island situated in the Mackinac Straits, called Castle Rock Island. The trip was in the nature of a holiday outing following the Bungalow Boys' trying experiences with the Chinese smugglers, as related in The Bungalow Boys in the Great Northwest.
Mr. Chisholm Dacre, the Bungalow Boys' uncle, with the mystery of whose life the first volume of this series—The Bungalow Boys—was concerned, had decided, after some persuasion, to allow the lads to go. It had been a trip which they had often longed to take. Mr. Dacre and the parents of Sandy MacTavish, whose father was a wealthy importer, agreed that a vacation cruise would do the lads no harm after their really trying experiences in the hands of Simon Lake.
The Sea Ranger had, therefore, been chartered, being a suitable craft for the expedition. Mr. MacTavish, who had a partial claim to Castle Rock Island, had permitted the boys to make it their rendezvous. They meant to use it as a sort of headquarters during their stay on the Great Lakes.
Well provisioned, and manned by as happy a crew as ever left New York harbor, the Sea Ranger had set out on her long trip through the Hudson River and through the canals, to Buffalo. From Buffalo, they voyaged by easy stages to Detroit, and thence to Port Huron. Till that afternoon when they had started on the last "leg" of their cruise, from Alpena, on Thunder Bay, they had not encountered any but ordinary incidents of travel. Now, however, it looked as if they were going to have an unpleasant change. But all the lads were adventurous and daring, and the prospect of a lively blow did not scare them.
A word of explanation is necessary in regard to Professor Podsnap's presence on the Sea Ranger. Two days before she had sailed from New York, the professor, whom the boys and Mr. Dacre had rescued from a drifting raft in Florida waters, appeared at the lads' home. He was about to start out on an expedition in search of Indian relics. By a strange chance, Lake Huron was to form part of his hunting ground. Mr. Dacre, deeming it a good thing to have an elder person along with the boys, had responded to the professor's somewhat broad hints by inviting him to join his nephews. As for the boys, they respected the professor's learning, and had a genuine liking for him, even if his eccentric ways did, at times, amuse them.
And now, what had promised to be a tame voyage, suddenly became fraught with excitement.
"Hold hard, everybody!" cried Tom suddenly.
He had seen a white wall of water sweeping down toward the Sea Ranger. The full fury of the storm was about to burst upon them.
"Here she comes!" yelled Jack, as the howling wind rushed down on them as if it would rend them apart.