“How can I eat? Perfectly. Got teeth and a palate for that enjoyment.”
“But don’t suggest that we may have bad weather. After that tempest yesterday——”
“You’ll have no hotel to run to if we get squally weather,” laughed her brother. “I think, however, that after that shower we should have clear weather for some time. Don’t let the ‘Burd Alling Blues’ bother you.”
“Anyway,” said Jessie, scooping out her iced melon with some gusto, “we have a radio on board and we can send an S O S if we get into trouble, can’t we?”
“Come to think of it,” said Darry, “that old radio hasn’t been working any too well. You will have to give it the once over, Jess, when you get aboard.”
This made Jessie all the more eager to embark on the yacht. She was so much interested in radio that she wanted, as Amy said, to be “fooling with it all of the time!”
But when they got under way and the Marigold steamed out to sea there were so many other things to see and to be interested in that the girls forgot all about the radio for the time being, in the mere joy of being alive.
Darry had shipped a cook; but the boys had to do a good deal of the deck work to relieve the forecastle hands. Stoking the furnace to keep up steam was no small job. The engines of the Marigold were old and, as Skipper Pandrick said, “were hogs for steam.” To tell the truth the boilers leaked and so did the cylinders. The boys had had trouble with the machinery ever since Darry had put the Marigold into commission. But the young owner did not want to go to the expense of getting new driving gear for the yacht. And, after all, the trouble did not seem to be serious.
The speed of the boat, however, was all the girls and other guests expected. The sea was smooth and blue, the wind was fair, the sun shone warmly, and altogether it was a charming day. Nobody expected trouble when everything was so calm and blissful.
But some time before evening haze gathered along the sealine and hid the main shore and Hackle Island, too. Nobody expected a sea spell, however, from this mild warning—not even Skipper Pandrick.