ed.

The lads shouted but there came no answering hail from the unseen boat.
They were perplexed to understand how their courses could be so far
apart. Presently the night breeze drew off the land, bringing with it
the scent of green things growing. Joe Hawkridge stared at the fire on
the beach and then turned to look at the spark of light on the ship. The
raft had drifted considerably to the southward. Anxiously Joe said to
his shipmate:

"The flood o' the tide must be setting us down the coast, in some crazy
current or other. Mayhap it runs strong through this race betwixt the
shoal and the beach with a slant that's bad for us."

"I noted it," glumly agreed Jack. "The jolly-boat passed too far away to
please me. And this landward breeze is driving us to sea."

"No sense in breaking our backs at these oars," grumbled Joe. "We go
ahead like a crab, with a sternboard. Think ye we can swing the raft to
fetch the ship?"

"After Captain Wellsby turns the pirates loose and quits her?" scoffed
Jack.

"I am a plaguey fool," cheerfully admitted Joe Hawkridge. "'Twould be
out of the frying-pan into the fire, with a vengeance."

"And no way to signal our friends," sadly exclaimed Jack. "We forgot
flint and steel. It looks much like another voyage."

"Straight for the open sea, my bully boy," agreed Joe. "And I'd as soon
chance it on a hen-coop."

CHAPTER VI

THE VOYAGE OF THE LITTLE RAFT

THESE sturdy youngsters were not easily frightened, and Jack Cockrell,
the landsman, was confident that wind and tide would change to send the
little raft shoreward. So tranquil was the sea that they rode secure and
dry upon the cabin hatch which was buoyed by the two short spars. Joe
Hawkridge was silent with foreboding of a fate more bitter than the
perils which they had escaped. He had seen a lone survivor of a crew of
pirates picked off a raft in the Caribbean, a grisly phantom raving mad
who had gnawed the flesh of his dead comrades.

They drifted quietly before the land breeze, beneath a sky all jeweled
with bright stars. The fire on the beach dimmed to a red spark and then
vanished from their wistful ken. They could no longer see the light on
the wreck of the _Plymouth Adventure_. Now and then the boys struggled
with the heavy oars and rowed until exhausted but they knew they could
be making no headway against the current which had gripped the derelict
raft. They ate sparingly of flinty biscuit and leathery beef pic