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Two Boys of the Battleship: or, For the Honor of Uncle Sam
Two Boys of the Battleship; Or, For the Honor of Uncle Sam
CHAPTER I – IN THE STORM
“Say, Frank, it’s certainly getting pretty bad; isn’t it?”
“Well, Ned, it surely isn’t getting any better. I’m positive of that. Look out! Here comes a big comber!”
There was a surge of green, foam-capped water, which looked as if it would engulf and overwhelm the dory motor boat, in which crouched two youths, one about eighteen, and the other slightly older.
“Hold her nose right into it, Frank!” cried the younger lad, who was bending over the laboring motor.
“That’s what I’m doing,” was the answer of his brother, “Whoop! Some water came aboard that time!”
The dory, built for rough work in the open sea, did not actually ship the wave, for her high and peculiarly built bow and stern were intended to meet just such emergencies, but there was a heavy storm brewing, and the wind whipped enough water off the top of the big wave to make three or four inches in the bottom of the craft.
“Think we can make the inlet, Frank?” inquired Ned Arden rather anxiously, as he straightened up, for now that the one big wave had been successfully coped with, there would be a short period of calm in the turmoil of the sea.
“Sure we’ll make it!” asserted Frank, as he shifted the wheel slightly to meet another comber, though not so large as the former one. “Of course we’ll make it. But I don’t mind admitting that I wish we were in the bay right now. The storm broke sooner than I thought it would.”
“But we’ve got a good boat,” Ned remarked, as he made a slight adjustment to the oil cups, to feed a little more of the lubricant to the toiling motor, which was enclosed in a sort of box amidships of the dory. Ned replaced the cover of the motor compartment and braced himself on a locker seat near his brother.
“Yes, a fine boat,” agreed Frank. “She’ll weather a worse storm than this.”