ave lost me chanct to win
immortal glory. Didn't I be afther fillin' that beast of a shark with
lead, so that his cronies they tore him into bits, an' devoured him in
a jiffy. Give the divvle his dues, boys."

"Yes," Jack hastened to say, "give Jimmy all that's coming to him,
fellows. He deserves it," at which there was a roar.

Starting again in the morning, the southward run was resumed. All were
now in a good humor. They seemed to be able to surmount any and all
difficulties as fast as they arose; and this disposition made them
light-hearted in the extreme.

One of the hams had been cooked in an oven on the preceding night, and
proved to be very tender eating after all.

Albemarle Sound was passed, and the one beyond it. Even the dreaded
Loggerhead Inlet proved to be a hollow mockery, in so far as giving
them any real trouble went, for they crossed it with the utmost ease.

With several hours of daylight still ahead, they entered upon the great
wide Pamlico Sound, which in places is all of twenty miles from shore
to shore. As it is extremely shallow in many places, this body of
water makes a treacherous sailing ground, and many a boat has met with
disaster while navigating it.

They had not been an hour afloat on Pamlico before Jack was sorry he
had started. Once more clouds had scurried above the horizon, and were
mounting with great fleetness. And this time he believed that the
storm would not prove a tempest in a teapot, as the last one had turned
out to be.

Vainly they looked about them for a haven of safety. There was
absolutely no point of land where the water was of sufficient depth to
allow of their finding a temporary harbor.

The clouds were climbing higher with a rapidity that told of the wind
that must soon sweep across that wide body of water with cruel violence.

"Whew! perhaps we ain't in for it now!" called George, as he drew up
closer to the others, to find out what Jack had to say; for strange as
it might seem, when peril confronted the boys of the Motor Boat Club,
they seemed to turn toward Jack with much the same confidence the
needle shows in pointing directly to the north.

"What can we do, Jack?" asked Nick, in more or less alarm, as they
plainly heard the distant growl of thunder; and in imagination the fat
boy could see himself in the cranky speed boat, as she caught the full
force of the wind, and turned turtle in the twenty-mile sound, amid the
crash of the storm.