The _Minerva_ dipped slowly and clumsily along, pushing the sparkling wavelets away from her blunt nose, and presently Billy Noon swung her head into the wind and brought her alongside the launch. He looked quite different to-day. He wore a suit of gray clothes which, if a little shabby, were very neat and clean, a figured shirt, turn-down collar and blue tie and a straw hat which had apparently seen more than one summer and undergone more than one cleansing at home.
Also he had dropped his extravagant manner and phraseology. This morning he was just a freckled-faced, red-haired, good-natured chap with an alert manner and a pair of blue eyes that twinkled cleverly and that seemed to take in the situation at one glance. Lowering his sail and making fast the painter of the cat-boat, Billy climbed aboard the launch and threw off his coat. Then he rolled up his shirt-sleeves, revealing a pair of very muscular brown arms.
“Yes,” said Dick, “she ran all the way from Silver Cove and went finely; made six miles an hour easily.” He threw a defiant glance at Chub.
“To be exact,” amended that youth solemnly, “six miles and one eighth by the patent log.”
“Well, let’s see,” said Billy Noon. “I guess there’s nothing very wrong.” He picked up the handle, fitted it to the fly-wheel and turned her over several times without results. Then he tested the battery, an operation which the boys watched with interest, and got a good spark.
[Illustration: “‘What did he tell us he gave for that boat?’”]
“Have you ever run a launch?” asked Roy curiously.
“No, but I operated a gas-engine once for about six months and got pretty well acquainted,” answered Billy. “That was in a pottery.” He looked over the engine for a moment in silence, his sharp eyes twinkling from one part to another. “Let’s see how the gasolene is coming. Maybe--hello!”
“Why, your cock under the carbureter has worked open and all your gasolene is running into the well. No wonder! Got a monkey-wrench?”
“Well, the handle will do. All it needs is just a tap to tighten it. There! Didn’t you try to flood your carbureter?”
“No,” answered Dick a trifle sheepishly. “We forgot it the last time.”
“If you had you’d have seen where the trouble was, because she wouldn’t have flooded. Now let’s see.”