“Storm!” echoed Will, looking hastily around.  “Oh, come, now!  You don’t think there can be any danger of that happening, do you, Frank?”

“Hardly.  If a little breeze rises, it may carry this beastly old fog away, and then we can see where we are.  Meanwhile, Jerry and I will try to find out what it is that makes our motor balk just when we want it most.”

They sat there for a long while, Bluff and Will looking this way and that, to see if there was any object near by; but only that heavy blanket of sea fog surrounded them.

“Do you hear the roll of the water on the shore still?” asked Frank finally.

“I haven’t for some time, now,” admitted Bluff.

“And I was just wondering, as I sat here and watched the water as it flowed past, whether we were not drifting out further all the time,” suggested Will.

“Say! what makes you think that?  Seems to me you’re always scaring up ghosts, and making things look blacker than they are,” grumbled Bluff.

“Well, you just watch that water passing.  What does that mean, eh?  Something is moving all the while, and it’s either the boat or the tide,” claimed Will.

Frank stuck his head over the side and gave a look.

“He’s right about it,” was his speedy comment.  “The tide is carrying us out all the time, and that’s why you don’t hear the sound of the rollers on the sand!”

“Wow!  You’re giving it to us good and hard now.  That sounds like trouble.  This old gulf is some wide, I know, and it’ll take us quite a spell to cross the duck pond at this rate!” exclaimed Bluff in dismay.

“Can’t either of you find out what’s wrong with the engine?” asked Will.

“We think we’ve guessed it, and we’re working on that line now; but it may take some little time, so don’t get impatient,” returned Frank.

If he felt any alarm himself, his manner did not indicate it; but then Frank had a faculty for disguising his feelings when it would add to the comfort of his chums.

So the old state of affairs continued, he and Jerry with their heads bent low over the machinery, and the others sitting there on deck, exchanging doleful words from time to time, and surveying that gray blanket that wrapped them in.

“How far do you think we’ve gone from shore?” asked Will finally.

“I was just trying to figure out from the way that water runs past.  It’s going faster than we are, you see.  I should say we might have drifted several miles since the motor broke down,” replied Bluff soberly.

“I wonder how deep it is here?”

“Say! what do you talk that way for?  Think we’ll have to swim for it?” exclaimed Bluff, in new alarm.

“Oh!  I hope not.  You see, I was thinking that if we could reach bottom it might be worth while to anchor here.  That would save us from getting any further from the shore, at any rate,” replied the other.