“Engine’s gone back on us,” answered Dick. At that moment the sail swung over and threw the occupant of the cat-boat into shadow. “It’s the Licensed Poet,” marveled Roy. “Billy Noon, as big as life,” added Chub. “I’ll see what I can do for you if you want me to,” said the skipper of the sailing craft. “I’ll be there pretty soon. It’s slow going in this breeze.” The boys sat down, nothing loth, and waited for the launch and sail-boat to draw together. “What did he tell us he gave for that boat?” asked Roy. “Four dollars, I think, and a set of dentist’s tools,” Dick replied. “Well, he got stuck! Look at it!” At some time, probably a good many years before, the _Minerva_ had been new and trim. To-day she was a veritable apology for a boat. Some twenty feet long, she was blunt of nose, wide of beam, almost guiltless of paint. The cockpit was only large enough to hold one man and allow the tiller to swing, the rest of the deck space being occupied by a cabin. One port had been closed with a piece of tin through which a length of stove-pipe and an elbow projected. The mast had apparently not been scraped for years and the single sail was gray with age and patched from boom to gaff. Once the hull had been white and the cabin green, but time and the weather had subdued all to a neutral hue that matched the old sail and the weather-stained mast. Closer acquaintance revealed the fact that most of her seams had opened and that she was about as near falling apart as anything could be that still held together. The _Minerva_ dipped slowly and clumsily along, pushing the sparkling wavelets away from her blunt nose, and presently Billy Noon swung her head into the wind and brought her alongside the launch. He looked quite different to-day. He wore a suit of gray clothes which, if a little shabby, were very neat and clean, a figured shirt, turn-down collar and blue tie and a straw hat which had apparently seen more than one summer and undergone more than one cleansing at home. Also he had dropped his extravagant manner and phraseology. This morning he was just a freckled-faced, red-haired, good-natured chap with an alert manner and a pair of blue eyes that twinkled cleverly and that seemed to take in the situation at one glance. Lowering his sail and making fast the painter of the cat-boat, Billy climbed aboard the launch and threw off his coat. Then he rolled up his shirt-sleeves, revealing a pair of very muscular brown arms. “Had her going, did you?” he asked. “Yes,” said Dick, “she ran all the way from Silver Cove and went finely; made six miles an hour easily.” He threw a defiant glance at Chub. “To be exact,” amended that youth solemnly, “six miles and one eighth by the patent log.”