Page:Barbour--Lost island.djvu/265

 "She's no racer, certainly," he said, "but considering she is the first boat we ever made the result is n't so bad, is it?"

Tempest glanced over her awkward lines.

"I 'll tell you better when I see her dancing over the silvery waves," he replied cautiously.

"We 're ready now, are n't we? All together. Push."

The Mud Turtle slid down the greased boards with the grace of a lumbering elephant, Dave, Tempest and Jim hanging on to her tenaciously. Just as she plunged into the water they all three leaped up the side. The boat had come down a considerable slope, and threw up a large wave as she dived. The water was dead calm, and the Mud Turtle shot out twenty feet from the shore, but even as she was doing so her builders realized that something was radically wrong. She was canting over at a perilous angle, and the strain of being launched had strained her timbers alarmingly. In half a dozen places jets of water were