ds. The man did not understand her. It began
to seem that both of them contemplated an attack on Bart and Merry.

"Wait a minute!" she cried. "Don't strike them, Frank, Bart, if you can
help it!"

"I think I'm awake," growled Hodge, as if he wanted to pinch himself to
make sure of it.

The scene was certainly a strange one--as strange as if taken from a
comic opera. The fishing-sloop rocking on the long swell, the dog cowed
and uncertain, one deaf man doubtingly flashing the lantern in the face
of Bart Hodge, and the other swaying unsteadily on his feet, as if he
contemplated making a blind rush at Merriwell. In less than a minute
Inza reappeared from the cuddy. She held in her hand a piece of paper on
which she had hastily written some explanatory sentences. This she
thrust beneath the nose of the man who held the lantern.

The effect was magical. The lantern came down, something that sounded
like an attempt at words gurgled in his throat, and he made a signal to
the other fisherman, whose attitude also changed instantly.

"It's all right now!" Inza laughed, though the laugh sounded a bit
hysterical.

"Well, I'm glad that it is!" said Merriwell. "But an explanation would
be comfortable."

"These men rescued me from the piece of broken boat to which I was
clinging," Inza hastily explained. "I was knocked overboard by the
collision. They are fishermen, and are now anchored on their
fishing-grounds."

"So I see. But what about one of them chasing you, when you ran out of
the cuddy this afternoon? You tried to jump overboard!"

"The men both thought me deranged by what I had passed through, and I
suppose I may have acted strange. I saw you and Bart on the raft, and I
tried to make the men see you. But they thought I was going to jump
overboard, and I was carried bodily into the cuddy and locked in. I
didn't know at the time that they could read writing, or I should have
tried that; though I was kept locked in the cuddy so long that it would
have done no good!"

Then she began to motion to the men; and one of the fellows came toward
Bart in a sheepish way and held out a hand. Bart hesitated about taking
it, fearing a trick; but the man's intentions were honest. Having made
this advance, the way to an understanding was so fully paved that within
less than ten minutes thereafter both Frank and Hodge, having wrung out
their clothing in a contracted place below deck, were warming themselves
and trying to get dry by