"Huh! that's right," remarked Nick; "and I noticed that you stayed aboard all right, Josh."
"Nothing to bother about with any of them, if only the boats behave half way decently," declared Jack. "If the engine of the Wireless hadn't balked just when it did, George wouldn't have had any trouble."
"And I'd have been saved my bath," chuckled Nick.
"But what of me, kind sors?" broke in Jimmy, in his thickest brogue, assumed, no doubt, for the occasion. "I'd have lost me chanct to win immortal glory. Didn't I be afther fillin' that beast of a shark with lead, so that his cronies they tore him into bits, an' devoured him in a jiffy. Give the divvle his dues, boys."
"Yes," Jack hastened to say, "give Jimmy all that's coming to him, fellows. He deserves it," at which there was a roar.
Starting again in the morning, the southward run was resumed. All were now in a good humor. They seemed to be able to surmount any and all difficulties as fast as they arose; and this disposition made them light-hearted in the extreme.
One of the hams had been cooked in an oven on the preceding night, and proved to be very tender eating after all.
Albemarle Sound was passed, and the one beyond it. Even the dreaded Loggerhead Inlet proved to be a hollow mockery, in so far as giving them any real trouble went, for they crossed it with the utmost ease.
With several hours of daylight still ahead, they entered upon the great wide Pamlico Sound, which in places is all of twenty miles from shore to shore. As it is extremely shallow in many places, this body of water makes a treacherous sailing ground, and many a boat has met with disaster while navigating it.
They had not been an hour afloat on Pamlico before Jack was sorry he had started. Once more clouds had scurried above the horizon, and were mounting with great fleetness. And this time he believed that the storm would not prove a tempest in a teapot, as the last one had turned out to be.