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.
77

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 alr............