CHAPTER XII DRIFTING

Skippy nosed the motor boat toward the Hook. He had no thought of anything save that he was angry and hurt and wanted to feel the fresh, salt breeze blow over his burning face. He felt that he must think over this new and humiliating status in which Marty Skinner had so cruelly placed him, and he wanted to think of it where no one could see the unhappiness that it caused him.

He hadn’t the heart to turn back toward the Basin and home. Home! He frowned at the word, for it seemed that the Minnie M. Baxter and all that it represented could bring him nothing now but recurring thoughts of the hated Skinner. All that the man had said had left its mark on the sensitive boy’s mind and for the first time in his life he felt a bitter hatred toward a fellow being.
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That Marty Skinner, old Josiah Flint’s right-hand man, should call his father a rogue, was hardly to be endured. But if it were so, he reasoned in a calmer moment, then all the more reason for the blame to fall on the dead Josiah. Hadn’t Old Flint himself been the worst rogue of all?

He was tempted to return and shout these thoughts so that all aboard the Apollyon might hear. He wanted to tell them what Toby had said about Josiah Flint making the despised Brown’s Basin possible because of his selfish, unscrupulous dealings.

But, boy-like, Skippy’s anger was soon reduced to a smoldering memory and his father’s imminent incarceration was a thing that had to be faced. Just now he was forced to think of his own present situation, for a significant sputtering from the motor gave warning that he was about to have trouble.

He had not his father’s knack for adjusting the rebellious motor, and so he decided to turn the boat about and make for the quieter waters of the bay. But just then the motor stalled and despite his earnest efforts, it refused to respond.

Skippy looked about him anxiously and saw that he had already been carried an alarming distance. Dusk was rapidly settling, hastened by the deepening haze and in a few moments the tide and undertow had swept him out of sight of all the anchored craft clustered about the Apollyon.
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He looked hopefully toward the Hook but saw that it was useless to try and reach it even with the one oar that the little boat had in reserve. The tide was against him.

After a quick glance about, he hunted around among some neglected tools lying at his feet and picked out the searchlight. But that, too, refused to respond; the battery was dead. Then he looked for some matches only to meet with disheartening disappointment.

He got to his knees after that and worked furiously at the cold motor, squinting at his hopeless task in the near-darkness. The boom of thunder could be heard from out at sea, and with the swiftly passing minutes the storm came nearer and nearer until it broke directly overhead.

Lightning flashed across the drifting boat and Skippy dodged under the bow. There was something terrifying about the elements when one was alone and drifting steadily toward the sea in an open boat.
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After a momentary lull, he crept out, not a little ashamed of his cowardice. He looked about, trying hard not to look or feel panicky despite the fact that he could see nothing of the Hook or anything else. Darkness and high, shadowy waves upon which the little boat bobbed were all that met his frightened gaze. Then a damp, cold wind began to blow.

He crouched down in the bottom of the boat with a feeling of dull despair. Rain pattered into an old rusty bait can that lay at his feet and he edged his shivering body closer under the bow. Curiously enough, he was quite calm now and the thought that his situation was dangerous did not enter his mind.

Skippy-like, he was thinking only that he was terribly hungry and more than anything else he wanted to eat.