bottom of
the sea----"

"Hush!" almost screamed Aurora, beginning to tremble. "It was so
horrible--I----"

With more of sympathy than had been between them before, Dolly slipped
her arm around Aurora's shoulders and playfully ordered:

"If you boys don't tell how you came on our promenade deck, when you
belonged on the tender, you sha'n't have any breakfast!"

"Melvin. I tell you it was Melvin. He's the only one of us didn't
sleep like a log. He felt the hurricane coming, right through his
dreams, and waked the lot of us, as soon as the first clap came. So he
rushed us over the plank to take off the awnings----"

"With such a wind sucking under them might have made the boat turn
turtle, Mrs. Calvert, don't you know? At sea--that's why I presumed to
give orders without----"

"Oh, my dear lad, I now 'order' you to 'give orders' whenever you
think best. We can trust you, and do thank you. But how dark it seems
now the lightning has stopped. Isn't there any sort of light we can
get?" said Aunt Betty, sitting down with Elsa and folding a steamer
rug around them both.

Cap'n Jack came stumping back from the rear of the boat in a high
state of excitement and actual glee.

"Clean gone! Plank a-swingin' loose--caught it a-board just in
time--t'other boat flip-floppin' around like she was all-possessed.
Reckon she is. The idee! A reg'lar steam engine on a craft not much
bigger 'n itself! What this house-boat needs isn't steam engines but
a set of stout sails an' a few fust-class poles. Come, lads, let's
anchor her--if the fool that built her didn't put them on the tender,
too, alongside his other silly contraptions."

Mrs. Calvert wondered if the old fellow knew what he was talking
about, but found the resolute tones of his voice a comfort. Whoever
else was frightened he was not and she liked him better at that moment
than she would have thought possible. All his whining discontent was
gone and he was honestly happy. What the others felt to be a terrible
misfortune was his opportunity to prove himself the fine "skipper" he
had boasted of being.

But now that the roar of the storm had subsided, there came across the
little space of water between the Lily and its Pad the outcries of
Ephraim and Methuselah, mingled with halloes of the engineer, John
Stinson.

"They want to come alongside! They're signallin'!" cried Cap'n Jack,
promptly putting his hands before his mouth, trumpet-fashion, and
returning such a lusty an