ool your coffee," shouted Sam Redding back at
him, across the fifty feet or so of water that lay between the two
boats. "We know what we are about."

"But you're risking your lives," shouted Merritt. "That thing wouldn't
live ten minutes in any kind of a sea."

"Well, we're not such a bunch of old women as to be scared of a little
wetting," jeered Jack Curtiss. "So long! We've got no time to wait
for that old tub of yours."

Before the boys could voice any more warnings, the hydroplane, which
had been slowed down, dashed off once more.

"I don't know what we are to do," spoke up Merritt. "We can't compel
them to go in, and, after all, the captain may be mistaken."

"No, I'm not, my son," rejoined the veteran. "I can smell wind--and
see them 'mare's tails' in the sky over yonder. They're as fall uv
wind as a preacher is uv texts."

"Well, we've done our best to warn them," concluded Rob. "If they are
so foolhardy as to keep on, we can't help it."

In half an hour more the boys had landed the captain at the little pier
he had built on his island, and to which his rowboat was attached, and
were ready to start back, good-bys having been said.

"Hark!" exclaimed the captain, as Rob prepared to give the order to "Go
ahead."

The boys listened, and heard a low, distant moaning sound, something
like the deepest rumbling notes of a church organ.

"That's the wind comin'," warned the captain. "Yer'd better be
hurryin' back."

With more hasty good-bys, the lads got under way at once. As they
emerged from the lee of the island they could see that seaward the
ocean was being rapidly lashed into choppy, white-crested waves by the
advancing storm, and that the wind was freshening into a really stiff
breeze.

"Those fellows must be wishing they took our advice now if they are
fools enough to have kept out," said Merritt, as he slowed down the
engine so as to permit the Flying Fish to ride the rising seas more
easily.

"Yes, I guess they're doing some tall thinking," agreed Tubby, as a
wave caught the little Flying Fish "quartering" on her port bow, and
sent a white smother of spray swirling back over her occupants.

"That's the time we got it," laughed Rob, from the wheel, peering
straight ahead. Suddenly he uttered a shout and pointed seaward.

"Look there!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "There are those
three fellows, and they're in trouble, from the looks of it."

The others looked, and beheld,