CHAPTER XX--SOMETHING SERIOUS
The three girls did not sleep much after that. The grumbling, stuttering notes of the foot-power horn seemed to fill all the air about the _Marigold_. Darry told them at breakfast that he used this old-fashioned horn on the yacht because it took too much steam if they used the regular horn.
"This is a great old tub," complained Burd, who had spent the previous hour at the device. "She makes only steam enough to blow the horn when you stop the engines. Great! Great!"
"You'd kick if you were going to be hung," observed his chum.
"Might as well be hung as sentenced to the treadmill. I suppose I have to go back and step on the tail of that horn after breakfast?"
"You'll take your turn if the fog does not lift."
"What could be sweeter!" grumbled Burd, and fell to on the viands before him with a just appreciation of the time vouchsafed him for the meal.
Burd's appetite never failed.
The fog, however, lifted. But it was a gray day and the girls looked upon the vessels which appeared out of the mist about them with an interest which was half fearful.
"Suppose one of those _had_ run into us?" suggested Jessie. "And there is a great liner off yonder. Why, if that had bumped us we must have been sunk----"
"Without trace," finished Amy, briskly. "The old cow's mooing did some good, I guess, Jess," and she chuckled.
She had told the boys about her chum thinking there must be a cow aboard in the night, and of course they all teased Jessie a good deal about it.
She laughed with them at herself, however. Jessie Norwood was no spoil-sport.
The _Marigold_ steamed into the east all that afternoon. But the weather did not improve. The hopes of a fair trip were gradually dissipated, and even the skipper looked about the horizon and shook his head.
"Seems as though there was plenty of wind coming, Mr. Darrington," he said to the owner of the yacht. "If these friends of yours are easily made sea-sick, we'd better get into shelter somewhere."
"Where'll we go?" demanded Darry. "Here we are off Montauk."
"With the direction the wind is going to blow when she gets going, we'd better run for the New Harbor at Block Island and get in through the breech there. It'll be calm as a millpond, once we're inside."
When Darry asked the others, however, the consensus of opinion was that they keep on for Boston.
"Can't we take the inside passage--go through the Cape Cod Canal?" asked Dr. Stanley. "That should eliminate all danger."
"Oh, there's no danger," Darry said. "The yacht is as seaworthy as can be. But I don't want any of you to be uncomfortable."
"I'm a good sailor," declared Nell.
"You know Jess and I are used to the water," Amy hastened to say. "Let us go on, Darry."
But the wind sprang up a little later and began to blow fitfully. The skipper considered it safer to keep well out to sea. Inshore waters are often dangerous even for a craft of as light draught as the _Marigold_.
The crowd sat on deck, keeping as much as possible in the shelter of the deckhouse, and were just as jolly as though there was no such thing on the whole ocean as a storm. Dr. Stanley told them several of his funny stories, and amused the young folks immensely.
In the midst of the general hilarity Nell went below for something. She was gone for some minutes and Jessie, at least, began to wonder where she was when she saw Nell's hand beckoning to her from an open stateroom window. Jessie got up and moved toward the place, wondering what the doctor's daughter had discovered that so excited her.
"What is it, Nell?" Jess whispered.
"Come down here--do!" exclaimed the other girl, her tone half muffled.
"What is the matter?" Jessie exclaimed, in wonder.
But she slipped around to the other side of the cabin, faced the gale, and reached the companionway. She darted down, being careful to shut tight the slide behind her. Already the waves were buffeting the small yacht and spray was dashing in over the weather rail.
Jessie found some difficulty in keeping her feet in the close cabin. It was so dark outside that the interior of the yacht was gloomy. She groped her way to their stateroom, which was the biggest aboard.
"What is the matter, Nell?" demanded Jessie, pushing open the door and peering in.
Nell Stanley's face was white. She stood by the open window. At Jessie's appearance she began to sob and tremble.
"I--I'm so frightened, Jess!" she gasped.
"Why, you silly! I thought you said you were a good sailor?"
"It isn't that," Nell told her. "Don't--don't you smell it?"
"Don't I smell what?"
"Come in and shut the door. Now smell--smell _hard_!"
Jessie began to giggle. "What do you mean? Why! I see a little haze of smoke by the window. Do I, or don't I?"
"I opened the window to let it out. But--but it comes more and more, Jessie," stammered the clergyman's daughter. "I believe the yacht is on fire, Jessie!"
"Oh! Don't say that!" murmured Jessie Norwood, suddenly frightened herself.
"When I came in the room was full of smoke and--don't you smell it?"
"It doesn't smell very nice," admitted her friend. "Where does the smoke come from? Where _can_ it come from?"
"It must come from below--from the hold under us."
"But what can be burning? This is not a cargo boat," said the puzzled Jessie. "We don't want to frighten them all, especially if it amounts to nothing."
"I know. That is why I called you first," Nell declared, anxiously. "I--I wasn't sure."
"Well, I am sure of one thing," said Jessie confidently.
"What is that?"
"This is a very serious thing if it is serious. We must tell Skipper Pandrick at once. Let him decide what is to be done."
"You wouldn't tell Darry?"