“Crackey!” ejaculated Eph Somers.
For a moment or two his face was a study in bewilderment.
“Mighty strange things have been happening all through this cruise,” Eph muttered, half-aloud. “Especially happening to Jack! Now, the two of them go aboard that sloop, and immediately after the boat puts out to sea in the dead of night. What if Jack and Hal have been shanghaied on that infernal sloop?”
Cold chills began to chase each other up and down the spine of Eph Somers. He was not, ordinarily, an imaginative youth, but just now the gruesome thought that had entered his mind persisted there.
He began to pace the platform deck in deep agitation.
“Anything wrong, sir?” questioned the marine sentry, halting and throwing his rifle over to port arms.
[pg 183] “That's just what I'd give a million dollars and ten cents to know!” exploded Eph.
“Gunboat, ahoy!” he shouted, some twenty seconds later.
“'Farnum,' ahoy!”
“I half believe, sir,” Eph rattled on, “that my two comrades, Mr. Benson and Mr. Hastings have been tricked, in some way, and carried out to sea on that knockabout. They'd have been back from shore by this time, if nothing had happened.”