Kitabı oku: «The Campfire Girls on Station Island: or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht», sayfa 4

CHAPTER IX – GOSSIP OUT OF THE ETHER

Jessie’s cry startled everybody on deck and Darry and Burd came running from the stern.

“Where is she? Do you see her? Throw out a buoy!” exclaimed the young owner of the yacht. “Hey, Skipper Pandrick! Lower the boat.”

“Man overboard!” shouted Burd Alling.

“Get out!” exclaimed Darry. “It’s not a man at all. It’s little Hen. Is that right, Jessie? Did you see her fall?”

“No-o,” replied Jessie. “But she’s not here. Where else could she have gone?”

Burd stared up and all about. Amy said promptly:

“You needn’t look into the air, Burd. Hen certainly didn’t fly away.”

The skipper arrived, but he was not excited. “Who did you say had gone overboard, Mr. Darry?” he asked.

“What does it matter? Can’t we save her without so much red tape?” snapped Darry. “Come on, Skipper! Get out the boat.”

“You mean the little girl who stood right here?” asked the man. “Well, now, I saw how she was playing her line. She didn’t have it fastened to a cleat. And she sure didn’t just now fasten it when she went overboard. No, I guess not.”

“Oh! Maybe he is right,” cried Jessie, with much relief.

“Well, I declare!” grumbled Darry. “It takes you girls to stir up excitement.”

“But where is little Hen?” Amy asked, whirling around to face her brother.

They all stared at one another. The skipper wagged his head.

“You’d better look around, alow and aloft, and see if she ain’t to be found. If she did go down, she ain’t come up again, that’s sure.”

“But that splash!” cried Jessie, anxiously.

“Wasn’t any splash except when I threw that big flatfish overboard,” said the skipper. “And the little girl didn’t scream. I guess she’s inboard rather than overboard – yes, ma’am!”

The four young people separated and scoured the yacht, both on deck and below. At least, the girls looked through the cabin and the staterooms and the boys went into the tiny forecastle. They met again in five minutes or so and stared wonderingly at each other. Little Henrietta had as utterly disappeared as though she had melted into thin air.

“What can have happened to the poor little thing?” cried Amy, now almost in tears.

“Of course, she must be on the boat if she hasn’t fallen overboard,” Jessie replied hesitatingly.

“That is wisdom,” remarked Burd Alling, dryly. “She hasn’t flown away, that’s sure.”

The two mothers were on the afterdeck in comfortable chairs; Jessie hated to disturb them, for Mrs. Norwood and Mrs. Drew had not heard the first outcry regarding Henrietta. Mr. Norwood and Mr. Drew were busy with their fishing-lines. Neither of the four adult passengers had seen the child.

“I’ll be hanged, but that is the greatest kid I ever saw!” exclaimed Darry Drew with vigor. “She’s always in some mischief or other.”

“I am so afraid she is in trouble,” confessed Jessie. “You know, we are responsible to her cousin Bertha Blair for her safety.”

“If the kid wants to dive overboard, are we to be held responsible?” demanded Burd, somewhat crossly.

“You hard-hearted boy!” exclaimed Amy. “Of course it is your fault if anything happens to Hennie.”

“I told you, Drew, that you were making a big mistake to let this crowd of girls aboard the Marigold,” complained the stocky youth, sighing deeply. “While this was strictly a bachelor barque we were all right.”

Jessie, however, was really too much worried to enter into any repartee of this character. She ran off again to the cabin to have a second look for Henrietta. She found no trace of her except the doll she had brought aboard and the green parasol.

She went back on deck. The fishermen were beginning to haul in weakfish and an occasional tautog, or blackfish. Amy, with a shout, hauled in Henrietta’s line and got inboard a fine flounder.

“Anyway, we’ll have a big fish-fry for supper. The men will clean the fish and Darry and Burd will fry them. Your mother and mine, Jess, say that they have got through with the galley for the day.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Jessie and, whirling suddenly around, started for the galley slide.

“Where are you going?” cried Amy. “Do help me with this flopping fish. I can’t get the hook out.”

Her chum did not halt. She knew that nobody had thought to look into the cook’s galley that had been shut up after lunch. She forced back the slide and peered in.

There on the deck of the little compartment, with her back against the wall, or bulkhead, was Henrietta. On one side was a jar of strawberry jam only half full. Much of the sticky sweet was smeared upon the cracker clutched in the child’s hand and upon her face and the front of her frock. Henrietta was asleep!

“What is it?” demanded Amy, who had followed her more excited chum. “What’s happened to her?”

“Look at that!” exclaimed Jessie, dramatically.

Darry and Burd drew near. Amy burst into stifled laughter.

“What do you know about that kid? She asked me if she could have a bite between meals and I told her of course she could. But I never thought she would take me so at my word.” Amy’s laughter was no longer stifled.

“Fishing in the jam jar is more to Hen’s taste than fishing in the ocean,” observed Darry.

“Nervy kid!” exclaimed Burd. “I’d like some of that jam myself.”

“Bring him away,” commanded Jessie, pushing to the slide. “She might as well sleep. We will know where she is, anyway.”

This little scare rather broke up the fishing for the Roselawn girls and the college boys. They went to the wireless room which had been built on deck behind the wheelhouse, and Darry put on the head harness and opened the key by which he took the messages he was able to obtain out of the air.

The girls were particularly interested in this form of radio telegraphy at this time. Darry had bought and was establishing a regular radio telephone receiving set, too. He could give Jessie and Amy a deal of information about the Morse alphabet as used in the commercial wireless service.

“Practice makes perfect,” he told them. “You can buy an ordinary key and sounder and practice until you can send fast. While you are learning that you automatically learn to read Morse. But I’ll have the radio set all right shortly and then we can get the station concerts.”

“How near we’ll be to that station on the island!” Amy cried. “It ought to sound as though it were right in our ears.”

“Not through your radiophone,” said her brother. “That station is a great brute of a commercial and signal station. It sends clear to the European shore. No concerts broadcasted from there. Now, let’s see if we can get some gossip out of the air.”

The girls took turns listening in, even though they could not understand more than a letter or two of Morse. Darry translated for their benefit certain general messages he caught. They learned that operators on the trans-Atlantic liners and on the cargo boats often talked back and forth, swapping yarns, news, and personal information. Occasionally a navy operator “crashed in” with a few words.

Calls came for vessels all up and down the North Atlantic. Information as to weather indications were broadcasted from Arlington. The air seemed full of voices, each to be caught at a certain wave-length.

“It is wonderful!” Jessie exclaimed. “‘Gossip out of the air’ is the right name for it. Just think of it, Amy! When we were born there was very little known about all this wonderful wireless.”

“Sh!” commanded her chum. “Don’t remind folks how frightfully young we are.”

CHAPTER X – ISLAND ADVENTURES

The Marigold loafed along within sight of the beaches that evening and the girls and their friends reclined in the deck-chairs and watched the parti-colored electric lights that wreathed the shore-front. Jessie was careful to keep Henrietta near by. She began to realize that looking after the freckle-faced little girl was going to be something of a trial.

Henrietta finally grew sleepy and Jessie and Amy took her below, helped her undress, and tucked her into a berth. The Roselawn girls’ mothers were much amused by this. Their daughters had taken a task upon themselves that would, as Mrs. Norwood said, teach them something.

“And it will not hurt them,” Mrs. Drew agreed, with an answering smile. “Amy, especially, needs to know what ‘duty’ means.”

“Anyway, we’ll know where she is while she is asleep,” Jessie said to her chum, as they left the little girl.

“If she isn’t a somnambulist,” chuckled Amy. “We forgot to ask Mrs. Foley or Bertha that.”

The ground swell lulled the girls to sleep that night, and even Henrietta did not awake until the first breakfast call in the morning. Through the port-light Jessie and Amy saw Burd Alling “bursting his cheeks with sound” as he essayed the changes on the key-bugle.

The Marigold was slipping along the coast easily, with the northern end of Station Island already in sight. The castle-like hotel sprawled all over the headland, but the widest bathing beach was just below it. Next were the premises of the Hackle Island Gold Club, with its pastures, shrubberies, and several water-holes. It was to a part of these enclosed premises that Mr. Norwood said little Henrietta Haney was laying claim.

“And I believe she will get it in time. Most of the land on which those summer houses beyond the golf course stand is also within the lines of the Padriac Haney place.”

He explained this to them while they all paced the deck after breakfast. The yacht was headed in toward the dock near the bungalows, some of which were very cheaply built and stood upon stilts near the shore.

The tall gray staff of the abandoned lighthouse was the landmark at the extreme southern end of the island. The sending and receiving station of the commercial wireless company was at the lighthouse, and the party aboard the Marigold could see the very tall antenna connected therewith.

The yacht landed the party and their baggage about ten o’clock. Mrs. Norwood’s servants were at hand to help, and a decrepit express wagon belonging to a “native” aided in the transportation of the goods to the big bungalow which was some rods back from the shore. There were no automobiles on the island.

“Is this my house?” Henrietta demanded the moment she learned which dwelling the party of vacationists would occupy.

“It may prove to be your house in the end,” Jessie told her.

“When’s the end?” was the blunt query. “How long do I have to wait?”

“We can’t tell that. My mother has the house for the summer. She has hired it for us all to live in.”

“Who does she pay? Do I get any of the money?” continued the little girl. “If this island is going to be mine some time, why not now? Why wait for something that is mine?”

It was very difficult for Jessie and Amy to make her understand the situation. In fact, she began to feel and express doubts about the attempt that was being made to discover and settle the legal phases of the Padriac Haney estate.

“If I don’t get my money and my island pretty soon somebody else will get it instead,” was the little girl’s confident statement.

“Oh, Jess!” exclaimed Amy under her breath, “suppose that should be so. You know Belle Ringold’s father is trying to prove his title to the same property.”

“Hush!” said Jessie. “Don’t let little Hen hear about that. She is getting hard to manage as it is. Henrietta! Where are you going now?” she called after the little girl.

“I’m going out to take a look at some of my island,” declared the child, as she banged the screen door.

“She’s sure to get into trouble,” Jessie observed, sighing.

“Oh, let her go,” Amy declared. “Why worry? You can’t watch her every minute we are here. She can’t very well fall overboard from this island.”

“I don’t know. She manages to do the most unexpected things,” said Jessie.

But there was so much to do in helping settle things and make the sparsely furnished bungalow comfortable that Jessie did not think for a while about Henrietta. Besides, she was desirous of setting up the radio instruments at once and stringing the antenna.

Darry and Burd helped the girls do this last. They worked hard, for they had first of all to plant in the sands some distance from the house an old mast that Mr. Norwood bought so as to erect the wires at least thirty feet above the ground.

The antenna were not completed at nightfall. Then, of a sudden, everybody began to wonder about Henrietta. Where was she? It was remembered that she had not been seen during most of the afternoon.

“Oh, dear!” worried Jessie. “It is my fault. I should not have let her go out alone that time, Amy.”

“She said she wanted to see her island, I remember,” admitted her chum, with some gravity. “And this island is a pretty big place, and it is growing dark.”

“She could not get into any trouble if she stayed on Hackle Island,” declared Darry. “What a kid!”

“And she certainly couldn’t have got off it,” suggested Burd.

“We must look around for her,” said Jessie, with conviction. “Don’t tell Momsy. She will worry. She thinks I have had my eye on the child all the time.”

“You certainly would have what they call a roving eye if you managed to keep it on Henrietta,” giggled Burd Alling. “She darts about like a swallow.”

Jessie felt it to be no joking matter. The four young people separated and went in different directions to hunt for the missing child. Station, or Hackle, Island at this end was mostly sand dunes or open flats. A little sparse grass grew in bunches, and there were clumps of beach plum bushes. Towards the golf course the land was higher and there real lawn and trees of some size were growing.

The low sand dunes stretched in gray windrows right across the island. Jessie tried to think what might have first attracted Henrietta at this end of the island. She did not believe that she would go far from the bungalow, although Amy wanted to start at once for the hotel. That was the object that attracted her first of all.

Jessie ran toward the far side of the island. It was growing dark and everything on both sea and shore looked gray and misty. The seabirds swept overhead and whistled mournfully. Jessie shouted Henrietta’s name as she ran.

But she began to labor up and down the sand dunes with difficulty. It frightened Jessie Norwood very much whenever Henrietta got into mischief or into danger. No knowing what harm might come to her on this lonely part of Station Island.

Nor was this fear in Jessie’s mind bred entirely by the feeling that it was her duty to look out for Henrietta. The child was an appealing little creature, though she had had little chance in the world thus far to develop her better and worthier qualities. The pity that Jessie Norwood had felt for the untamed girl at first was now blossoming into love.

“What would I ever say to Bertha and Mrs. Foley if anything happened to the child!” Jessie murmured.

CHAPTER XI – TROUBLE

Jessie was beginning to learn that to guard the welfare of a lively youngster like Henrietta was no small task. The worst of it was, she was so fond of the little girl that she worried about her much of the time. And Henrietta seemed to have a penchant for getting into trouble.

Jessie called, and she called again and again, as she ploughed through the sand, and heard in reply only the shrieks of the gulls and peewees. Gray clouds had rolled up from the Western horizon and covered completely the glow of sunset. It was going to be a drab evening, and all the hollows were already filled with shadow.

Jessie toiled up the slope of one sand-hill after another, calling and listening, calling and listening, but all to no avail. What could have become of Henrietta Haney?

Suddenly Jessie fairly tumbled into an excavation in the sand. Although she could not see the place, her hands told her that the hole was deep and the sand somewhat moist. The hole had been dug recently, for the surface of the dunes was still warm from the rays of the sun.

She stumbled down the slope of the sand dune and found another hole, then another. Dark as it was in the hollow, when she kicked something that rattled, she knew what it was.

“Henrietta’s pail and shovel!” Jessie exclaimed aloud. “She has been here.”

She picked up the articles. Before leaving New Melford she had herself bought the pail and shovel for the freckle-faced little girl.

Where had the child gone from here? Already Jessie was some distance from the group of bungalows. As Henrietta insisted upon believing that most of the island belonged to her “by good rights,” there was no telling what part of it she might have aimed for after playing in the sand.

Jessie shouted again, her voice wailing over the sands almost as mournfully as the cries of the sea-fowl. Again and again she shouted, but without hearing a human sound in reply. She labored on, and it grew so dark that she began to wish one of the others had come with her. Even Amy’s presence would have been a comfort.

She came to the brink of a yawning sand-pit, the bottom of which was so dark she could not see it. She began skirting this hollow, crying out as she went, and almost in tears.

Suddenly Darry’s voice answered her. She was fond of Darry – thought him a most wonderful fellow, in fact. But there was just one thing Jessie wanted of him now.

“Have you seen her?” she cried.

“Not a bit. I have been away down to the lighthouse. Nobody has seen her there.”

“Oh! Who you lookin’ for?” suddenly asked a voice out of the darkness.

“Henrietta!” shrieked Jessie, and plunged down into the dark sand-pit.

“Who’s lost?” asked the little girl again. “Ow-ow! I – I guess I been asleep, Miss Jessie.”

“Has that kid shown up at last?” grumbled Darry, climbing to the sand ridge.

“Is it night?” demanded Henrietta, as Jessie clasped her with an energy that betrayed her relief. “Why, it wasn’t dark when I came down here.”

“How did you get down there?” demanded Darry from above.

“I rolled down. I guess I was tired. I dug so much sand – ”

“Did you dig all those holes I found, Henrietta?” demanded the relieved Jessie.

“Why, no, Miss Jessie. I didn’t dig holes. I dug sand and let the holes be,” declared the freckle-faced little girl scornfully.

Darry sat down and laughed, but while he laughed Jessie toiled up the yielding sand hill with her hand clasping Henrietta’s. “Ow-ow!” yawned the child again. “When do we eat, Miss Jessie? Or is eating all over?”

“Listen to the kid!” ejaculated Darry. “Here! Give her to me. I’ll carry her. Want to go pickaback, Hen?”

“Well, it’s dark and nobody can see us. I don’t mind,” said Henrietta soberly. “But I guess I’m too big to be lugged around that way in common. ’Specially now that I own this island – or, most of it – and am going to have money of my own.”

“She’s harping on that idea too much,” observed Darry to Jessie, in a low tone.

The latter thought so too. Funny as little Henrietta was, the stressing of her expected fortune was going to do her no good. Jessie began to see that this fault had to be corrected.

“Goodness!” she thought, stumbling along after the young collegian and his burden, “I might as well have a younger sister to take care of. Children, as Mrs. Foley says, are a sight of trouble.”

They heard Amy and Burd shouting back of the bungalow, and they responded to their cries.

“Did you find that young Indian?” cried Burd.

“You’ve hit it. This little squaw should be named ‘Plenty Trouble’ rather than ‘Spotted Snake, the Witch.’”

“Why,” said Henrietta, sleepily, “I never have any trouble – of course I don’t.”

It was about as Jessie said, however: They were never confident that the freckled little girl was all right save when she was asleep. She had bread and milk and went right to bed when they got home with her. Then the evening was a busy one for the quartette of older young folks.

The radio set was put into place in the library of the bungalow. They had brought the two-step amplifier and proposed to use that for most of their listening in, rather than the headphones. Although Darry and Burd helped in this preliminary work, the girls really knew more about the adjustment of the various parts than the college youths.

But in the morning Darry and Burd strung the wires and completed the antenna. The house connection was made and the ground connection. By noon all was complete and after lunch Jessie opened the switch and they got the wave-length of a New York broadcasting station and heard a brief concert and a lecture on advertising methods that did not, in truth, greatly interest the girls.

After that they tuned in and caught the Stratfordtown broadcasting. They recognized Mr. Blair’s voice announcing the numbers of the afternoon concert program.

But radio did not hold the attention of these young people all the time, although they had all become enthusiasts. They were at the seashore, and there were a hundred things to do that they could not do at home in Roselawn. The sands were smooth, the surf rolled in white ruffles, and the cool green and blue of the sea was most attractive. One of the safest bathing beaches bordering Station Island was directly in front of the bungalow colony.

At four o’clock they were all in their bathing suits and joined the company already in the surf or along the sands. In any summer colony acquaintanceships are formed rapidly. Jessie and Amy had already seen some girls of about their own age whom they liked the looks of, and they were glad to see them again at the bathing hour.

“Is it a perfectly safe beach?” Mrs. Norwood asked, and was assured by her husband that so it was rated. There were no strong currents or undertows along this shore. And, in any case, there was a lifeguard in a boat just off shore and another patrolling the sands.

“I ain’t afraid!” proclaimed Henrietta, dashing into the water immediately. “Come on, Miss Jessie! Come on, Miss Amy, you won’t get drowned at my island.”

“What a funny little thing she is,” said one of the friendly girls who overheard Henrietta. “Does she think she owns Station Island?”

“That is exactly what she does think,” said Amy, grimly.

“I never!” drawled the girl. “And there is a girl up at the hotel who talks the same way. At least, when she was down here yesterday she said her father owns all this part of Station Island and is going to have the bungalows torn down.”

Jessie and Amy looked at each other with understanding.

“I guess I know who that girl is,” said Amy quickly. “It’s Belle Ringold.”

“Yes. Her name is Ringold,” said their new acquaintance. “Do you suppose it is so – that her father can drive us all out of the cottages? You know, we have already paid rent for the season.”