ut none from any sister naval ship. However,
they were so near land that it did not seem that this mattered.

"Let her go, boy!" shouted the ensign to the operator. "Come on! She's
going down."

They pulled away just in time, and got the little engine to kicking as
the wrecked auxiliary craft of the _Kennebunk_ sank stern foremost under
the sea. As she went down her bows rose out of the water and the
castaways saw the great wound torn in two of her water-tight
compartments by the mine.

CHAPTER XVIII

MORE TROUBLE

Philip Morgan and Al Torrance both were in the yawl, and were assigned
to pull oars if the engine went dead from any cause. The two younger
Seacove boys were taken by the warrant officer, Mr. Mudge, aboard the
buoyant raft.

"Well, old man," muttered Torry in his mate's ear, "this is a new
experience. We've never been shipwrecked before."

Ikey on the raft was bewailing the loss of some of his duffle. "Oi, oi!
And a nice new black silk neckerchief, too! Oi, oi! All for the fishes
yet."

Mr. MacMasters laughed, and did not order the boys to cease talking as a
sterner officer might have done.

"We may as well take it cheerfully," he said. "I'm thankful there's
nobody lost. And there can be no blame attached to any of us because of
the loss of the boat."

"Ah, that's all right," grumbled the warrant officer on the raft. "But
think of those miserable Huns, sneaking away in here and dropping a
mine in a channel where nothing but small craft dare sail."

"Excursion steamers from Charleston use this channel," Mr. MacMasters
said. "I know it to be a fact."

"Ah! That's the Hun of it," repeated the second. "To sink a craft having
aboard a lot of innocent and helpless folk out on a pleasure excursion
would be just his delight."

First of all the two officers had looked over their charts and decided
on the course to pursue. Charleston was not the nearest port.

The barometer was falling again and there was every promise of more bad
weather. It was decided to make for a small town behind the islands, and
instead of continuing through the channel where the _Kennebunk's_
auxiliary steamer had been mined, it seemed better to take advantage of
the tide and run back to the open sea.

There they proposed to skirt along the outer beaches of the islands
until they reached another passage marked on the charts as being the
entrance to the sheltered harbor of the port in question. The distance
was about