“I’m just hankering for scalloped oysters, but perhaps a stew would be easier to start with.  We have the unsweetened milk, you know, and they say that answers first rate.  How are you on that, Frank?”

“I can manage it first rate.  Are you fond of a stew, Will?”

“Yes.  I like them any way.  But I was watching Jerry out there.  What under the sun is he doing?”

Frank cast a quick glance out over the water.

“He’s got a fish on, and it seems to be a big one, too!” he exclaimed.

“Why, it’s pulling his boat around like fun!  Look at that, will you?  Say! be careful, Jerry, or overboard you go!” shrieked Will.

“There!  He’s headed this way, now, and going faster than ever!  I never saw such a thing before, in all my life!  What can it be, Frank?” cried Bluff, excited.

“I don’t know for certain, but I’d venture to say he’s fast to a shark!” answered Frank, hurrying to the side of the motor-boat to see better.

“A shark!  Great Caesar’s ghost!  What will become of him?  Why, the brute is carrying our pard off!  There he goes, faster and faster, and headed straight out toward the open gulf!  Jerry, let him go!” called Will in his excitement.

Jerry, in the little cockleshell of a dinghy, was whirling past as this cry rang out.  He turned to wave a hand at his chums, and they heard him singing: 

“A life on the ocean wave for me, my boys!”

CHAPTER XII

THE BREAKDOWN OF THE MOTOR

“Say! he’s going off, dead sure!” exclaimed Will, in distress.

“He certainly seems to be having a free ride out to sea,” remarked Frank.

“But that little craft will upset, and let him drown, Frank!  Can’t you stop him from such mad capers?” continued the other.

Frank put his hands up to his mouth in such fashion that they formed a sort of megaphone, and allowed his voice to carry far.

“I say, Jerry!” he bawled.

“Hello!” came faintly from the onrushing fisherman, who was sitting in such fashion as to properly balance his small pumpkin-seed-shaped craft as it sped over the water, so rapidly as to leave a sheet of white foam behind.

“Cut loose!  Danger!” shouted Frank.

“Did he hear you, Frank?” asked Will anxiously.

“I guess so.  Anyhow, he seems to be moving toward the bow, where his line is fast.  I hope he has a knife with him, that’s all,” replied Frank, straining his eyes to see what was going on, for the sun had set, and already dusk was just commencing to gather over the water.

“He always carries one in his fishing bag,” declared Bluff, not a little alarmed himself over this new source of danger, so utterly foreign to anything they had ever experienced before.

“There!  He’s done it!  Hurrah!” shouted Will in relief.

“I bet he hated to let that thing go!” said Bluff, who knew the determined nature of the fisherman full well.