“We’ll not be goin’ straight for the Channel, we’ll not,” called Big Joe as if anticipating Skippy’s fears. “We’ll be layin’ quite like below here a ways ’till the Minnehaha gets in the Channel. ’Tis a funny name, hey kid?”
“Mm,” Skippy answered. “It’s a Indian name, Big Joe—I think it means sumpin’ like Laughing—Laughing sumpin’.”
Big Joe’s mirth knew no bounds.
“Sure and just about now Minnie ain’t laughin’, she ain’t,” he said. “’Tis us.”
“Not me,” Skippy said gloomily. “I won’t laugh ... not till after.”
An hour later they were chugging noisily toward Watson’s Channel. The sun was glorious and the water glistened under its warm spring rays. Gulls frolicked about in the foaming spray and Skippy tried hard to believe there was nothing but peace in his busy mind.
After a time they heard a distant sound, faint at first but growing louder within a few minutes. Tully grinned at Skippy’s questioning face and nodded as the piercing note of a siren cut the silent sunlit air.
“Sure, and I wonder what that might be?” he said with mock-seriousness. “Sounds like distress I’d be sayin’, I would.”
“Stop kiddin’, Big Joe,” Skippy pleaded. “You mean you think it’s them?”
“Well now I wouldn’ be s’prised,” the big fellow answered. Then seriously, he said: “We’ll be gettin’ there, kid! Don’t be lookin’ as if they was drownin’ or somethin’. Sure they could keep afloat for hours so they could, and look at the tide besides.”