Three minutes later, and Nick Longfellow--who belied his name dreadfully, in that he was short, and fat, and built pretty much after the style of a full meal bag--was rowing clumsily toward a likely spot, where he believed he might do some successful fishing.
A trio of motor boats were anchored just inside Mosquito Inlet, not far from the town of New Smyrna on the east coast of Florida, having come in that very afternoon, after making the outside passage from the mouth of the St. Johns River.
They might have entered at St. Augustine, and taken the inside passage down to this place, only that something was wrong with the connecting canal that led to the Halifax River, and it seemed unwise to take the chances of being held up.
The boat from which Nick had put out on his fishing excursion was a slender looking craft, and evidently capable of making high speed; but from the way she rolled whenever any one aboard moved, it could be seen that she must prove rather an uncomfortable home on which to spend very much time. The name painted in letters of gold on her bow was _Wireless_; and her skipper, George Rollins, took more or less pride in her accomplishments; although, truth to tell, he spent much of his time tinkering with her high-power engine, that had a way of betraying his trust when conditions made it most exasperating.
The boat from which the said Jimmy had started was called the _Tramp_. Her lines were not so fine as those of the hurry boat; but, nevertheless, an experienced cruiser would have picked her out as an ideal craft for combined business and pleasure. Her skipper was Jack Stormways, really the commodore of the little fleet; and his crew consisted of Jimmy Brannigan, a boy who sported many freckles, a happy-go-lucky disposition, and a little of the Irish brogue whenever he happened to remember his descent from the old kings of Erin.
As to the third motor boat, it was a broad beamed affair, that really looked like a pumpkin seed on a large scale; or, as some of the boys often called it, a "tub." It was well named the _Comfort_, and its owner, Herbert Dickson, content to take things easy and let others do the hustling, never denied the claim George was fond of making, that he could draw circles around the "Ark" with his fast one. The engine of the _Comfort_ had never failed to do its level best, which was limited to some nine miles an hour.