“Well, we certainly are up against it—good and proper!” exclaimed Jack. “And I’m glad the girls aren’t along!”
“Why?” asked Walter, leaning back against the gunwale to rest after laboring over the refractory engine of the Dixie.
“Because they can’t call me down for my slang. And believe muh—as the telephone girls say—I can use slang now and then—some!”
“It is aggravating; isn’t it?” asked Dray.
“Aggravating, my dear chap, is hardly the word,” drawled Ed. “It’s humiliating!”
He brought that out in such a droll way that the others laughed.
For the engine of the motor boat still refused to be coaxed into going. They were being carried out toward the mouth of the bay on the outgoing tide, which was now running strongly. Soon they would be out to sea, and though the moon still shone brightly there was a haze in the sky that betokened a coming storm.
But it was not so much the fact of the stalled engine, nor that they were being carried out to sea, and were in some danger, that worried the boys.
“We’re falling down on what we said we’d do,” declared Jack. “We promised the girls that we’d save Denny from those fellows, and we can’t do it. They may be at him now.”
“We certainly saw a light at his cabin,” ventured Ed.