"Did we get off our course much?" Bob asked as they reached the wheel house.
"Not much we didn't," the captain replied indignantly. "I shot the sun just before you came out, and, unless I'm off my reckoning, we'll cross the line in about an hour from now."
"You mean the equator?" Jack asked.
"Sure, I mean the equator. What other line is there down here, I'd like to know?"
"Well, I reckon we're lucky that we didn't get snarled up in it," Bob laughed as Pat came in, and the captain turned the wheel over to him and announced that he was going to get something to eat.
"Snarled up in what?" Pat asked as soon the captain left the room.
"Oh, that was only some of Bob's foolishness," Jack told him. "He was trying to be funny because the captain spoke of the equator as a line."
By nightfall the sea had fallen to a gentle swell, and there was every indication of fair weather ahead.
"What's that thing following us?"
It was the following morning, shortly after ten o'clock, and the two boys, together with their uncle, were sitting beneath an awning in the stern of the boat as Bob asked the question, at the same time pointing to a triangular shaped object some hundred feet astern.