Glancing around as if to assure himself that no one was within hearing, he hitched the barrel on which he was seated nearer his visitor. 

 "There's a sight of plague with motor-boats among these shoals," he went on eagerly.  "What with the eel-grass that grows along the inlets an' the kelp that's washed in by the tide after a storm, the propeller of a motor-boat is snarled up a good bit of the time. Now my scheme," he announced, his last trace of reserve vanishing, "is to box that propeller somehow—if so be as it can be done—an'—," the voice trailed off into meditation. 

 Robert Morton, too, was silent. 

 "You would have to see that the wheel was kept free," he mused aloud after an interval. 

 "I know it." 

 "And not check the speed of the boat." 

 "Right you are, mate!" exclaimed Willie with delight. 

 "And not hamper the swing of the rudder." 

 "You have it! You have it!" Willie shouted, rubbing his hands together and smiling broadly.  "It's all them things I'm up against." 

 "I believe the trick might be turned, though," replied young Morton, rising from the nail keg on which he was sitting and striding about the narrow room.  "It's a pretty problem and one it would be rather good fun to work out." 

 "I'd need to rig up a model to experiment with, I s'pose," reflected Willie. 

 "Oh, we could fix that easily enough," Bob cried with rising enthusiasm. 

 "We?" 

 "Sure! I'll help you." 

 The announcement did not altogether reassure the inventor, and Bob laughed at the dubious expression of his face. 

 "Of course I'm only a dry-land sailor," he went on to explain good-humoredly, "and I do not begin to have had the experience with boats that you have. I did, however, study about them some at Tech and perhaps—" 

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