"What are we going to do?" asked Jack presently, after an interval in which both brothers rather anxiously inspected the signs of "dirty weather."
"How are your engines working?" was Tom's way of answering with another question.
"Splendidly; as they have done ever since we left New York. I'm not anxious about them."
"Then we'll keep right on as we are. It would be risky to turn back to Thunder Bay now. The Sea Ranger is stanch. We saw to that before we chartered her. She will weather it, all right."
"I guess you're right. But I can see here and now that our camping cruise isn't going to be all fun. These Lake Huron storms have a bad reputation. When we were down off Florida, old Captain Pangloss said that they were as bad as anything he had encountered, even in the China seas."
"At any rate, that trip taught us a lot about boat-handling," said Tom, "and other things, too," he added, with a rather grim smile, as he recalled the stirring times they had had on the voyage referred to. Those adventures were all set forth in full in The Bungalow Boys Marooned in the Tropics.
"They sure did," agreed the younger Dacre. "The weather looked like this off Hatteras, before the time we beat out Dampier and Captain Walstein in the search for the sunken treasure-ship."
"And thereby helped to get large enough bank accounts to plan this trip," interpolated Tom. "By the way, I wonder whatever became of those two rascals after their escape from jail?"
"The papers said that they were supposed to have made their way to Canada. But nobody knows for certain."
While he spoke, the sea was growing more and more turbulent.