"I! I!" puffed Caradoc, whose spurt had blown him badly. "I said nothing about sharks!"
"Well, what did you say?" demanded Greer.
Caradoc thought back fretfully. "I said we were running into a cul de sac."
"A cool de sock!" repeated Greer with irritation. "What did you want to say 'cool de sock' for?"
"I was calling to a gentleman," panted Smith with an edge of temper in his tone, "and here you've swung us clear off our bearings because you didn't know a common French phrase——"
"French! I'm no Frenchman! Why don't you talk English!"
The two tired, worried, overheated men were rapidly brewing a quarrel, when Madden interrupted.
"Look how close we are to that schooner! If somebody would raise another shark alarm, we'd land plump on her decks."
"Yes, but this Zulu here has run us straight into a loop of seaweed it'll take two hours' swimming to get out of—cul de sac, school of sharks! Why the two phrases scarcely resemble each other!"
Madden turned longing eyes toward the motionless schooner that was not more than three-quarters of a mile distant. "Say, it's too bad to turn around and swim away from that vessel!" he lamented wearily, "and this sun is fierce!"