ER CHASE
MOTOR BOAT BOYS DOWN THE DANUBE

THE MOTOR BOAT BOYS

DOWN THE COAST;

or

Through Storm and Stress to Florida

CHAPTER I.

AFLOAT ON THE LOWER DELAWARE.

"Toot your horn, Jimmy, and let everybody know we're off at last!"

"Sure, there's the ould _Wireless_ coming up on us, hand over fist.
It's a broth of a bhoy George Rollins is for speed!"

"Yes, he always starts out well, and with a rush; but generally manages
to have his engine break down; and then even the wide old tub _Comfort_
gets there ahead of the narrow speed boat. Now give 'em a blast,
Jimmy. The coast cruise is on!"

Accordingly, Jimmy Brannigan, who served as cook and crew aboard the
staunch motor boat _Tramp_, some twenty-three feet in length by six
feet wide (the boat, not Jimmy), and with Jack Stormways as pilot,
puffed out his cheeks and blew.

It was a necessary method for sounding the conch shell horn, which, if
blown like a bugle, would send out a screech that could be heard a mile
away.

Answering toots came from the two other crafts that had just left
Philadelphia astern, and were heading down the old Delaware River,
bound for Florida.

Here were six of the happiest young chaps on the face of the globe;
and, indeed, how could they help it? Blessed with good health; three
of them owning motor boats that had served them now for two seasons,
and with stores aboard for a "bully" voyage down the Atlantic coast,
taking the inland passage, what more could the heart of a real boy,
with red blood in his veins, sigh for!

These six lads lived in a town "out Mississippi way." They had long
ago ceased to be novices in the management of motor boats, and the
great benefit they seemed to have secured from previous trips on the
water, both down the wonderful Mississippi and on the Great Lakes, had
convinced their fathers that they were to be trusted under any and all
conditions.

Hence, when a calamity befell the high school of their native place,
which all of them attended, fire destroying the main part of the
building, so that there could be no session until some time after
Christmas, and a brilliant scheme dawned upon the mind of Jack
Stormways, they were not long in convincing those who controlled their
destinies that the opportunity for a run down the Atlantic coast before
winter set in, with possibly a similar cruise along the Mexican gulf to
New Orleans, was too good to be lost.

And so they had come to Philad