[Illustration: THE TURTLE KEPT TURNING TO REACH THE MEAT]
Suddenly there was a rush in the water and the pole bent almost double. The reel sent out a shrill screech.
“I’ve hooked him!” cried the professor. “He’s free from the rope now! Start the engine, Jerry!”
Jerry lost no time in doing this. The chug-chug of the motor was soon heard and the _Dartaway_ forged ahead, freed from its deep-sea captor.
“Haul up the anchor!” called the professor to Ned. “We don’t want any more happenings like that. Bob, put the wheel around and send us toward shore. It’s too rough out here.”
The three boys were busy attending to the boat, while the scientist was still holding the tauted line and the bent pole over the side of the craft. An instant later there sounded a sharp snap.
“The line’s broken!” cried the professor. “There goes the turtle!”
He pointed ahead to where a flurry in the water indicated the presence of the creature. “Well, I hope he likes his canned beef with hook dressing. At any rate we’re well rid of him, though I would liked to have had him for a specimen.”
“That was quite a trick,” observed Jerry, as he took charge of the steering wheel.
Professor Snodgrass wound back on the reel what remained of the line. Then he unjointed the pole.
“Yes,” he remarked. “I thought that was about the only way we could make the turtle let go of the rope. I enticed him around to one side, and that, naturally, made the rope drop from under his flipper. We’ll have to be more careful after this.”
Speeding the motor up, Jerry soon had the boat near shore, and he directed the course along the coast in comparatively quiet water.
They came into a small sheltered bay and, in a little cove where palm trees came down almost to the water’s edge, forming an ideal spot to rest, they went ashore.
“I think I’ll take a little walk into the interior while you boys get dinner,” remarked the professor, taking his butterfly net and the cyanide bottle which he used for painlessly killing insects he captured.
“If you see any orange groves let me know,” called Bob.
The three boys were soon busy setting up their portable stove and preparing a meal, using the canned provisions they had brought along.
“How about fish?” asked Ned. “Looks as though there ought to be some in this cove.”