“She’ll ride it out, Tubby!” yelled Merritt, dousing the engine with more oil.

“Sure she will!” yelled back Tubby, with a confidence that was, however, largely assumed.  The stout youth had just been assailed by an alarming thought that flashed across his mind.

“Would the gasoline hold out?”

There was no opportunity on the plunging, bucking craft to examine the tank, and all the boy could do was to make a rapid mental calculation, based on what he knew of the consumption of the engine.  The tank, he knew, had been half full when they came out, and that, under ordinary conditions, would have sufficed to drive the Flying Fish for five or six hours.

But they were not ordinary conditions under which she was now laboring.  Tubby knew that Merritt was piling in every ounce of gasoline the carburetor could take care of.

Suddenly, while the stout youth’s mind was busied with these thoughts, and without the slightest warning, there came a sort of wheezing gasp from the motor.

Merritt leaned over it in alarm.  He seized the timing lever and shoved it over and opened the gasoline cock full tilt.

But there was no response from the motor.

It gasped out a cough a couple of times and turned over in a dying fashion for a few revolutions and then stopped dead.

The boys were adrift in the teeth of the storm in a crippled boat.

“What’s the matter?” roared back Tubby from the wheel.  “She’s lost steerage way!”

“Motor’s gone dead,” howled back Merritt laconically.

“Great Scott, we are in for it now!  What’s the matter?”

“No gasolene,” yelled Merritt.

“Sosh-osh-soh!”

A huge green wave climbed on to the Flying Fish’s bow, shaking her from stem to stern like a terrier shakes a rat.

“We’ve got to do something quick, or we’ll be swamped!” roared Merritt.

“The cockpit cover, quick!” shouted Tubby, steadying himself in the bucking craft by a tight grasp on the bulwarks.

“That’s it.  Now the oars.  Hurry up.  Here, you Hiram, grab that can and bail for all you’re worth!”

The fat youth seemed transformed by the sudden emergency into the most active of beings.

“What are you going to do?” yelled Merritt, framing his mouth with his hands.

“Make a spray hood.  Come forward here and give me a hand.”