“Oh, a nice little blow from the sou’west,” answered Nelson. “The old _Vagabond_ thinks she’s doing a Highland fling.”
“How long’s it going to last?” asked Bob, with a dubious look about him.
“Not long, I guess. I hope not, anyhow, for we’re not likely to find a tow while it keeps up. Wake Tommy and get him to start breakfast, will you? A cup of hot coffee might taste nasty, but I don’t think so.”
Bob’s eyes brightened as he drew back out of the wind to awaken the _chef_ and finish dressing; “hot coffee” surely has a grateful sound on a wet deck at six o’clock in the morning. And it tastes a whole lot nicer than it sounds; everyone would have agreed to that half an hour later, especially Nelson, who drank his coffee from a tin cup and ate his bacon and eggs from the top of the cabin, where the end of the tender sheltered the plate from the rain.
“I’m just as well pleased that we didn’t try to go to New York with the others,” observed Bob after breakfast. “About this time they must be down around the mouth of Buzzard’s Bay, and I’ll bet it’s blowing up nasty there.”
“Well, there was no danger of our getting there,” said Nelson.
“That’s so; I’d forgotten that. But, say, I’m glad I’m not on the _Sue_ about this time!”
“So do I,” said Nelson. “Well, we’ll find out if we ever get to land. Hang this wind, anyway! Last night we might have used the tender and towed a bit, but we couldn’t do that now in this sea to save our lives.”
“I hope it won’t be necessary to try it,” said Bob dryly.
And as it proved, it wasn’t. For before nine the wind died down, the sun came out strongly, and the sea, while still choppy, calmed considerably. Nelson set the yachting ensign upside down as a signal of distress, and the Four kept a sharp watch for boats. Little by little the shoreline showed clear and sharp to the west, and sails and smoke showed here and there on the water. But it was all of an hour before any craft came near enough to see the _Vagabond’s_ dilemma. Then it was an ocean-going tug, which bore down on them from the north with a schooner in tow. The boys waved and used the megaphone, and the tug presently altered her course and ran up to them.
“Broke down?” shouted a man from the door of the pilot house.