“That’s what they all say,” observed Tubby grimly.  “The thing to do now is to get back to shore somehow.  Maybe we can rig up a sail with the cockpit cover and the oars.  We’ve got to try it, anyhow.”

After hauling in the sea anchor, the lads set to work to rig up and lash the oars into an A shape.  The canvas was lashed to each of the arms of the A, and the contrivance then set up and secured to the fore and aft cleats by the mooring line they had utilized for the sea anchor.

“Well,” remarked Tubby, as he surveyed his handiwork with some satisfaction and pride, “we can go before the wind now, anyhow—­even if we do look like a lost, strayed or stolen Chinese junk.”

“Say, I’m so hungry I could eat one of those fish raw!” exclaimed Hiram, now quite recovered, as the Flying Fish, under her clumsy sail, began to stagger along in the direction in which Tubby believed the land lay, the wind fortunately being dead aft.

“Great Scott, the kid’s right!” exclaimed Merritt.  “We forgot all about eating in the gloom but now I believe I could almost follow Hiram’s lead and eat some of those fellows as they are.”

“Well, that’s about all you’ll get to eat for a long time,” remarked Tubby, grimly casting an anxious eye aloft at the filling “sail.”

CHAPTER XVII

ALMOST RUN DOWN

It grew dark rapidly and the night fell on three lonely, wet, hungry boys, rolling along in a disabled boat under what was surely one of the queerest rigs ever devised.  It answered its purpose, though, and under her “jury mast” the Flying Fish actually made some headway through the water.

None of the boys said much, and Tubby, under the cover of the darkness, tightened his capacious belt.  It spoke volumes for his Boy Scout training that, though he probably felt the pangs of hunger as much or even more keenly than the others, he made no complaint.  Hiram, the second-class scout, complained a bit at first, but soon quieted down under Merritt’s stern looks; as for the latter, as corporal of the Eagle Patrol, it was his duty to try to keep as cheerful as possible; which, under the circumstances, was about as hard a task as could well be imagined.

The eyes of all three were kept strained ahead for some sign of a light, for they had been so tossed about in the squall that all sense of direction had been lost, and they had no compass aboard, which in itself was a piece of carelessness.

Suddenly, after about an hour of “going it blind” in this fashion, young Hiram gave a shout.

“A light, a light!”

“Where?” demanded Tubby and Merritt sharply.

“Off there,” cried the lad, pointing to the left, over the port side of the boat.

Both the elder lads gazed sharply.

“That’s not the direction in which land would lie,” mused Tubby.

“The light’s pretty high up, too, isn’t it?” suggested Merritt.  “It might be a lighthouse.  We may have been blown farther than we thought.”