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 squirting into her, and in one place where a patch had been sprung the sea was coming in faster than it could have been bailed out.

Jim looked at the wreck of their hopes with a perfectly blank expression. Perhaps he had anticipated something of the sort all the time. Dave, standing ankle deep in the bottom of the boat, frowned gloomily. Tempest, leaning against the side of the craft that was highest out of the water, in an attempt to keep her balanced, laughed long and loudly.

"I don't call it a bit funny," the boy said, watching the Mud Turtle slowly settle down.

"I refuse to burst into tears about it," Tempest said. "It is a whole lot funnier to see her going down now right here than it would have been if we had got about fifty miles away from shore in her and then she had started to play tricks on us."

"I suppose it is, really," agreed Dave, who was beginning to absorb from Bruce Tempest some of his unquenchable good spirits whatever