“Blitzen! Den you dink dot dis island may go py der bottom?” gasped the little professor.
“Wa-al, it wouldn’t surprise me,” rejoined the captain, producing a pipe and filling it leisurely. When it was lit and drawing, he supplemented this remark:
“We’ve got to get ashore, gents.”
“That’s plain enough,” said Mr. Chadwick, “but unless some ship picks us up, how are we going to do it?”
“Why, as I onderstand, these boys here have a sort of fly-with-me-swim-with-me boat, ain’t they?” asked the captain. “What’s the matter with our using that?”
It was odd, and goes to show how confused the average human mind may become in a big emergency, but up to that moment not one of them had thought of the Wondership. Her awkward bulk was still secured on the top of the midship cabin house, and as far as could be seen she was undamaged.
“But the rent in the gas bag?” objected Mr. Chadwick.
“I guess we can fix that,” volunteered Jack. “Some canvas and pitch will make a patch that will hold.”
“Plenty of those aboard,” said the captain. “Now, I tell you what we’ll do. We didn’t have much of a breakfast, and we’re all as empty as a whale that ain’t struck no fish. Hungry folks can’t do good work. Give me a crew with full stomachs and I’ll take a lumber raft across the ocean. I’ll turn to with Dick here, and cook up a good meal. The boys kin overhaul their Johnny-jump-up, yonder, and the professor and Mr. Chadwick can get to work selecting supplies and so on to stock the thing with. For we may land, if we land at all, in some place where they ain’t got no hotels to welcome shipwrecked strangers.”
The captain’s suggestions met with unanimous approval, and while Jack and Tom clambered up to inspect the Wondership, the others scattered on their various tasks. As they worked, Jack and Tom from time to time took a look at the island on which the yacht rested. It might have been that their imaginations were quickened by what the captain had said, but it appeared to them that the bushes at the water’s edge were gradually subsiding into the sea.