ough on the boards? Let me help you! You can't be feeling very strong
after that blow."

Merriwell drew himself higher out of the water, and found that the heavy
board supported his weight.

"If only the fog would clear now! I hear a whistle away off there."

"Do you suppose the _Merry Seas_ was sunk?" Hodge asked.

"I sha'n't think so until I have to. I think the barge got much the
worst of it. The steamer seemed to cut it right in two."

"Perhaps we can get up higher on these boards."

"I've been thinking of that myself," Hodge answered.

The two friends had locked hands across the narrow space that separated
them. Now, by Merriwell first helping Bart and then Bart returning the
favor, they managed to get up higher out of the water, and were
gratified to find that the boards were sufficiently buoyant to sustain
them.

For fifteen or twenty minutes they had thus drifted on, talking and
conjecturing, listening at intervals, and now and then sending up a loud
call. The fog-siren on the shore was still screeching, and the whistles
of vessels were now and then heard. But about them was that impenetrable
gray wall of fog.

Having secured an easier position, Frank fumbled with his chilled
fingers for his watch, which he finally drew out. It was wet, of course,
but, to his surprise, was still merrily ticking away. By holding it near
his eyes the time could be told.

"About half an hour, I judge, since the collision."

"No more than that? Seems to me it has been a half a day."

Again there was silence.

"I should think a vessel would anchor, instead of trying to go on in
such a fog as this!" Bart snarled.

The memory of the disaster was beginning to make him bitter against the
captain.

"They do, usually. The captain thought he could make his way in, that is
all!"

"And I'm afraid some of our friends have gone to the bottom as a result
of it. We seem in a good way to investigate Davy Jones' locker
ourselves!"

"I'm going to believe that our friends are all right. It can't be
possible that both the tug and the steamer sank. The tug wasn't really
in the collision, you know. She would be able to take off every one from
the steamer, no doubt, even if the steamer was so injured that she could
not float. The thing I most fear is that some of them may have been
hurled overboard, just as we were, and were not lucky enough to find
anything to sustain them. But I shall not believe anything of the kind
as long as I