o little trouble. I'm
afraid he'll waste away to mere skin and bones yet."

The _Tramp_ was soon headed for the spot where they could see their
comrades waving their arms wildly as if afraid the second boat in the
race might pass them by.

"Same old story?" asked Jack, as he brought alongside and gripped the
hands of the forlorn shipwrecked travelers.

"Rotten luck!" groaned Nick, shaking his head dolefully. "I'm pining
away, fellows, inch by inch. Why, my clothes are ready to drop off me,
I'm getting so like a scarecrow. Mebbe you don't believe me, but it's
a fact. And I'm that nervous I keep quivering all the time like
a--a----"

"A bowl full of jelly;" burst out Jimmie. "Sure, I do belave ye,
Buster. And as Jack and me sail along so cheerful loike, me thoughts
often fly till ye, and I fale that only for that stubborn will ye'd
have gone and given up long ago."

"What's wrong this time, George?" asked Jack.

"Oh! everything now," replied the disgusted skipper of the _Wireless_.
"No use in my trying to tinker with the job. It will take a practical
machinist to overhaul the plagued contraption. I guess you'll have to
give us a tow to Memphis, where I can put a man to work getting this
engine in some sort of shape."

"All right!" Jack exclaimed. "And the sooner we start the better, if
we want to make it before dark. Get a line out, and we'll fasten to
this cleat at our stern. Then we can talk as we move along; because
Jimmie and myself have got a lovely little fairy story to tell you, to
pass away the time."

Nick looked at the others suspiciously.

"Now, what's been coming your way, I'd just like to know?" he grumbled.
"Never saw such luck as you have in all my life. 'Tain't fair, that's
what. Here I have all the tortures, the scares and the duckings, too,
when I've lost my swimming wings; and you fellows gobble everything
that comes along in the way of fun."

"Sorry," laughed Jack; "but they will keep piling these things upon us.
We have nothing to do with it at all, Buster. Only when it happens, we
just have to get out of the hole the best way we can, you know."

"I just bet, now, you've met up with them old bank smashers again.
Look at 'em grin would you, George. Ten to one they grabbed the
fellers and recovered all that fine boodle we read about! It would be
just like Jack's luck!"

"We did that same, thank ye, Buster," said Jimmie, assuming a proud
attitude, with a hand thrust into