"How can you sleep through this?" "Oh, _I'm_ all right," answered Jack, in smothered tones. "Well, _I'm_ not!" growled Clifford, as he sprang to his feet and proceeded to spend the few hours until daybreak in battle with his small but ferocious enemies. At sunrise, the castaways refreshed themselves with a prolonged bath; and then, hungry as bears, they impatiently waited for slack water, when they sprang into the Slug, and by long and hard work, at last reached the mainland not far above the Highlands. [Illustration: "THE TWO HUNGRY LADS WERE SOON DISPATCHING THEIR BREAKFAST."] An investigation of their finances showed the boys that they had, together, exactly sixty-five cents. With that sum, therefore, they had to provide a breakfast, pay steamboat fares home, and meet unknown incidental expenses. A little shop was soon found where coffee, butter, and a roll would be furnished to each boy for thirty cents. Their fares home would amount to twenty cents; and the boys decided to take the chance that fifteen cents would prove adequate to the unforeseen. Remembering the soft-shell crabs in the locker, Clifford induced the good-natured landlady to cook them "without extra charge;" and soon the two hungry lads were dispatching their thirty-cent breakfast, which included fried potatoes, also "donated" by the kind-hearted hostess. At ten o'clock on that eventful Saturday morning, the young navigators re-embarked and dropped down with the tide to the steamboat landing at the Highlands. The boys soon saw the Seabird plowing her way to the landing. When she had landed, the Slug was quickly made fast to the stern of the larger boat, and ere long the steamer was bearing them homeward. Seated well forward on the upper deck, the boys were congratulating themselves on being at last free from all anxiety, when suddenly they were startled by loud cries from the stern of the steamboat: "Hi! Hi! You lads who own the little boat astern! Hurry! quick! quick! She's sinking! she's sinking!" Running to the spot whence came those warning shouts; Clifford and Jack looked down at the Slug and saw that the small center-board had been thrown entirely out of its trunk by the force of the water which had been churned to a white foam under the huge paddle-wheels of the Seabird,--and a broad stream pouring through this opening into their "yacht" threatened each moment to swamp it. "Bother that yacht! She's going to haunt us all our lives!" cried Jack, in dismay; but Clifford, taking in the state of affairs at a glance, ran to the lower deck, and with one stroke of his pocket-knife cut the Slug's painter, and then the two boys silently and sadly watched their boat drop far behind in the fan-shaped wake of the larger vessel. "She may be picked up by some one alongshore, but, more likely, she'll go to the bottom," thoughtfully remarked Clifford.