"Can’t!" said Jimmy Davis nervously. "She--she--won’t turn--and--"
Here his pole slipped out of its hole and down he tumbled on the raft, his pole falling into the water.
[Illustration: "Down he tumbled on the raft, his pole falling into the water." _Page 16_]
"Oh dear!" shrieked Dick. "What a set! There goes that oar! Reach after it, Dab!"
Dab already was beating the water furiously with his pole in his efforts to reach that "oar" now adrift. It was all in vain. The conspiracy to take them all to sea and there let them spend the chilly night had spread to the very equipments of the _Great Emperor_.
"Catch me on a raft ag’in!" whimpered John Richards.
"Catch me on one with you!" replied Dick fiercely. "Might have got that boy if you had pulled, and now those other folks have got him."
"’Those other folks’ are coming after us!" observed Dab Richards.
"Oh dear!" groaned the humiliated Dick. "Make believe pull up river."
"Pull so that they may think that we don’t need them. Now!" urged Dick.
Jimmy Davis also was going to say, "I won’t;" but he remembered that his pole was in the water, and refrained. He looked rebellious, though he said nothing.
There was now not only a conspiracy among the elements, but a mutiny among the crew. Dick sulked.
"Let her drift!" he said. "I don’t care!"
"She won’t drift long!" remarked Dab sarcastically. "The _Great Emperor_, that started to pick up somebody, is now going to be picked up by somebody."
Yes, the fishermen were pulling out from the shore. They picked up the boat, attached it to their own craft, and then laboriously rowed for the vessel in the hands of conspirators without and mutineers within.
"Bound for the bottom of the sea," said Dick grimly.
"We’ll stave that off," said Bill. "Here, take this rope! Now, we must try to git you ashore."
It was rather a queer tug-boat that did the towing---a fisherman’s dory in which, sandwich fashion, alternated piles of codfish and oarsmen rowing; Bill, Dan, and Bart’s rescuer. It was a singular fleet also that was towed ashore--the _Great Emperor_ and Gran’sir Trafton’s boat.
"Who is that boy rowing with those fishermen?" wondered Dick. "Can it be--"
Finally, when this strange fleet had been beached, Dick shouted out, "That you, Dave Fletcher?"