CHAPTER XX—SOMETHING SERIOUS
The three girls did not sleep much after that. The grumbling, stuttering notes of the foot-power horn seemed to fill all the air about the Marigold. Darry told them at breakfast that he used this old-fashioned horn on the yacht because it took too much steam if they used the regular horn.
“This is a great old tub,” complained Burd, who had spent the previous hour at the device. “She makes only steam enough to blow the horn when you stop the engines. Great! Great!”
“You’d kick if you were going to be hung,” observed his chum.
“Might as well be hung as sentenced to the treadmill. I suppose I have to go back and step on the tail of that horn after breakfast?”
“You’ll take your turn if the fog does not lift.”
“What could be sweeter!” grumbled Burd, and fell to on the viands before him with a just appreciation of the time vouchsafed him for the meal. Burd’s appetite never failed.
The fog, however, lifted. But it was a gray day and the girls looked upon the vessels which appeared out of the mist about them with an interest which was half fearful.
“Suppose one of those had run into us?” suggested Jessie. “And there is a great liner off yonder. Why, if that had bumped us we must have been sunk——”
“Without trace,” finished Amy, briskly. “The old cow’s mooing did some good, I guess, Jess,” and she chuckled.