Page:The Rover Boys on the Ocean.djvu/15

Rh a single mast. But the stick was at least ten feet longer than the mast of the Spray, and the boat was correspondingly larger in every respect. As she came nearer the Rover boys saw that she contained two occupants, a boy and a somewhat elderly man.

"Sheer off there!" cried Dick, at the top of his lungs. "Do you want to run us down?"

"Get out of the way yourself!" came back the answer from the boy in the other boat.

"We can't get out&mdash;we are almost on the rocks now!" yelled Tom. Then he gave a start of surprise. "Why, it's Mumps!"

"By jinks, it is John Fenwick!" muttered Dick. "I remember now that he came from the Hudson River and that his folks owned a boat." He raised his voice. "Are you going to sheer off or not?"

By this time the two boats were nearly bowsprit to bowsprit, and Sam Rover's heart almost stopped beating. But now Mumps spoke to the man with him, and his craft, called the Falcon, sheered to port, scraping the Spray's side as she did so.

"Mumps, what do you mean by such work?" demanded Dick, when the immediate danger was past.

"Ha! ha! I thought I would give you a