As Curlie's feet carried him forward on the deck of the Kittlewake, his eyes beheld the ghost which rose from the hatch taking on a familiar form. A white middy blouse, short white skirt and a white tarn, worn by a slender girl, moved forward to meet him. As the form came into the square of light cast by a cabin window, his lips framed her name:
"Gladys Ardmore!"
"Why, yes," she smiled, "didn't you expect me? I told you I thought I'd go."
"And I said you should not." Her coolness angered him.
"You forget that this is my father's boat. A man's daughter should always be a welcome guest on his boat."
"But—but that's not it," he hesitated. "This is not a pleasure trip. We are going five hundred miles straight to sea in a boat intended for shore travel. It's likely to storm." He sniffed the air and held his cheek to the breeze that was already breaking the water into little choppy waves. "It is going to be dangerous."
"But you are going," she said soberly, "to the assistance of my brother. I have a better right than you to risk my life to save my own brother. I can be of assistance to you. Truly, I can. I can be the galley cook."
"You a cook?" He looked his surprise.
"Certainly. Do you think a rich man's daughter can do nothing but play tennis and pour tea? Those times are gone, if indeed they ever existed. I am as able to do things as is your sister, if you have one."
"But," said Curlie suddenly, "I am going from a sense of duty. Having set out to have your brother arrested I mean to do it."
For a full moment she stared at him stupefied. Then she said slowly, through set, white lips: "You wouldn't do that?"
"Why shouldn't I?" His tone was more gentle. "He has broken the laws of the air. Time and again he sent messages on 600, a radio wave length reserved to coast and ship service alone. He has hindered sea traffic and once narrowly escaped being the death of brave men at sea."
"Oh," she breathed, sinking down upon a coil of cable, "I—didn't know it was as bad as that. And I—I—knew all about it. I—I—"
She did not finish but sat there staring at him. At last she spoke again. Her tone was strained and husky with emotion.
"You—you'll want to arrest me too when you know the truth."
"You'll not be dragged into it unless you insist."
"But I do insist!" She sprang to her feet. Her nails digging into her clenched fists, she faced him. Her eyes were bright and terrible.
"Do you think," she fairly screamed, "that I would be part of a thing that was wrong, whether I knew it or not at the time, and then when trouble came from it, do you think that I would sneak out of it and allow someone else to suffer for it? Do you think I'd sneak out of it because anyone would let me—because I am a girl?"
Completely at a loss to know what to do upon this turn of events, Curlie stood there staring back at the girl.
She at last sank back upon her seat. Curlie took three turns around the deck. At last he approached her with a steady step.
"Miss Ardmore," he said, taking off his cap, "I apologize. I—I really didn't know that a girl could be that kind of a real sport."
Before she could answer he hurried on: "For the time being we can let the matter we were just speaking of rest. Matters far more important than the vindicating of the law, important as that always is, are before us. Your brother and his friend, unless I am mistaken, are in grave danger. We may be able to save them; we may not. We can but try and this trial requires all our wisdom and strength.
"More than that," he again held his face to the stiffening gale, "we ourselves are in considerable danger. Whether this 'cockleshell,' as the skipper calls her, can weather a severe storm on the open sea, is a question. That question is to be answered within a few hours. We're in for a blow. We're too far on our way to retreat if we wished to. We must weather it. You can be of assistance to us as you suggest, and more than that, you can help us by being brave, fearless and hopeful. May we count on you?"
There was a cold, brave smile on the girl's face as she answered:
"You know my father. He has never yet been beaten. I am his child."
Then suddenly, casting all reserve aside, she gripped his arm and bestowing a warm smile upon him said almost in a whisper:
"Curlie Carson, I like you. You're real, the realest person I ever knew." Then turning swiftly about, she danced along the deck, to disappear down the hatch to the forecastle.
"Huh!" said Curlie, after a moment's thought, "I never could make out what girls are like. But one thing I'm sure of: that one will drown or starve or freeze when necessity demands it, without a murmur. You can count on her!"
Throwing a swift glance to where a thick bank of clouds was painting the night sky the color of blue-black ink, he hurried below to consult with the skipper about the weather. They were, he concluded, some three hundred and fifty miles out to sea. If this storm meant grave dangers to them, what must it mean to two boys in a seaplane skimming through the air over the sea? He shivered at the thought.
Fifteen minutes later, Curlie was in the small wireless cabin of the Kittlewake. With a receiver clamped over his head, with a motor purring at his feet and with the hum of wires and coils all about him, he felt more at ease and at home than he had been for many hours.
His talk with the skipper had confirmed his fears; they were in for a blow.
"A nor'-easter, sir," he had affirmed, "an' one you'll remember for many a day. Oh! we'll weather 'er, sir; somehow we'll 'ave to weather 'er. With the millionaire heiress aboard we'll 'ave to, worse luck for it. We'll 'ammer down the 'atches an' let 'er ride if we 'ave to but it's a jolly 'ard shaking habout we'll get, sir. But she's a 'arty, clean-hulled little boat, she is, an' she'll ride 'er some'ow."
After receiving this information, Curlie had gone directly to the wireless cabin. He was more anxious than he was willing to admit for the safety of his two charges, the millionaire's children; for Curlie did think of them as his charges. He was used to taking burdens on his own shoulders. It had always been his way.
Just now he was listening in on 600, ready to pick up any message which might come from the boys on the seaplane. That the Stormy Petrel was a doomed aircraft he had not the least doubt. The only question which remained in his mind was whether the Kittlewake or some other craft would reach her in time to save the two reckless boys.
Now and again as he listened he picked up a message from shore. The center of the storm, which was fast approaching, was to the east, off shore. Messages coming from the storm's direction would be greatly disturbed by static. But to the west the air was still clear.
Now he heard a ship off Long Island Sound speaking for a pilot; now some shore station at Boston assigned to some ship a harbor space; and now some powerful broadcasting station sent out to all the world a warning against the rising storm.
Tiring of all this, for a time he tuned his instrument to 200.
"Be interesting to see how far short wave lengths and high power will carry," was his mental comment.
Now he caught a faint echo of a song; now a note of laughter; and now the serious tones of some man speaking with his homefolks.
But what was this? He fancied he caught a familiar whisper. Adjusting his wires, adding all the amplifying power his instruments possessed, he listened eagerly; then, to his astonishment heard his own nickname spoken.
"Hello, Curlie," came to him distinctly. Then, "Are you there? You remember that big bad man, the one who used heaps of power on 1200? Well, he's gone north—very far north. You'd want to follow him, Curlie, if you knew what I know. The radiophone is going to do great things for the north, Curlie. But men like him will spoil it all. Remember this, Curlie: If you do go, be careful. Careful. He's a bad man and the stakes are big!" The whisper ceased. The silence that followed it was ghostly.
"And that," Curlie whispered softly, "came all the way from my dear old home town. She thought I was still in the secret tower room. Fine chance of my following that fellow up north. But when I get back I'll investigate. There may be something big there, just as she says there is. Yes, I'll look into it when I get back—if I do get back."
He shivered as he caught the howl of the wind in the rigging. Then, tuning his instrument back to 600, he listened once more for some message from the seaplane, the Stormy Petrel.
The spot of light which raced across the waters of the sea where no land was to be seen, where the black surface of the swiftly changing waters shone always beneath the occupants of the seaplane, took on an ever widening circle. There appeared to be no end to Alfred Brightwood's belief that somewhere in the midst of all this waste of waters there was an island.
Vincent Ardmore had long since given up hope of becoming rich by this mad adventure. His only hope, the one that gave strength to his arms benumbed by long clinging to the flashlight and new sight to his eyes, weary with watching, was that they might discover some bit of land, a coral island, perhaps, where they might find refuge from the sea until a craft, called to their aid, might rescue them.
The thought of returning to the mainland he had all but abandoned. The gas in the tank was too low for that; at least he was quite certain it must be.
There was a chance, of course, that if they alighted upon the water and sent out an S. O. S., the international call for aid, they would be answered by some near-by ship. But this seemed only a remote possibility. He dared not hope it would happen. They were far from any regular course of trans-Atlantic vessels and too far from shore to be picked up by a coast vessel or a fishing smack. The very fact that this island, marked so plainly on the ancient map, had been in this particular spot, so remote from the main sea-roads, had strengthened their belief that during all the centuries of travel it had been lost from man's memory and hidden from his view. Now this very isolation, since they were unable to locate this island, if indeed it existed at all, threatened to be their undoing.
Still they circled and circled with great, untiring sweeps. At last, releasing the searchlight, Vincent put his lips to a speaking tube.
"Let's light," he grumbled. "I'm dead. What's the use?"
"What else can we do but keep looking?" Alfred answered.
"Take a look at the gas. Maybe it will carry us back."
Even as he spoke, a strange thing happened. The air appeared suddenly to have dropped from beneath the plane. Straight down for fifty feet she dropped.
With the utmost difficulty Alfred succeeded in preventing her from taking a nose dive into the sea.
"She—she bumped," he managed to pant at last. "Something the matter with the air."
And indeed there was something about the atmospheric conditions which they had not sensed. Busy as they had been they had not seen the black bank of clouds to the northeast of them. With the wild rush of air from sheer speed, they had not felt the increasing strength of the gale. Once Vincent had fancied that the sea, far beneath them, seemed disturbed, but so far beneath them was it that he could not tell.
Now in surprise and consternation, as if to steady his reeling brain, he gripped the fuselage beside him while he shrilled into the tube:
"Look! Look over there! Lightning!"
"Watch out, I'm going down," warned the other boy. "Going to light."
To do this was no easy task. Three times they swooped low, to skim along just over the crest of the waves, only to tilt upward again.
"Looks bad," grumbled the young pilot.
The fourth time, he dared it. With the spray spattering his goggles, he sent the plane right into the midst of it. For a second it seemed that nothing could save them, that the wave they had nose-dived into would throw their plane end for end and land her on her back, with her two occupants hopeless prisoners strapped head down to drown beneath her.
But at last the powerful motors conquered and, tossed by the ever increasing swells, the plane rode the sea like the stormy petrel after which she had been named.
"Quick!" exclaimed Alfred as the motors ceased to throb. "Strip off your harness and get back to the tank."
A moment later Vincent was making a perilous journey to the gas tank. Twice the wind all but swept him into the sea; once a wave drenched him with its chilling waters. When at last he reached his destination it was only to utter a groan; more gas had been used than he had dared think.
"Can't—can't make it," he mumbled as he struggled back to his place.
"Have to send out an S. O. S. then. What wave length do you use?
"You ought to know," exclaimed Vincent almost savagely. "You were the one who insisted on using it when we were making up our plans."
"Six hundred? Oh, yes," Alfred said indifferently. "Well, what of it?"
"Just this much of it," said Vincent thoughtfully. "I've been going over and over it in my mind the last little while. What if we send out our S. O. S. now and some selfish landlubber such as we were is talking about matters of little importance and muddles our message? We might be left to drown."
"Aw, can that sob stuff," grumbled Alfred angrily. "Are you going to send that S. O. S. or am I?"
"I will," said Vincent, preparing to climb to a position on the plane above him where the radiophone was located. "But"—he suddenly began to sway dizzily—"but where are we?"
He sank back into his seat. For a full moment, with the waves tossing the plane about and the black clouds mounting higher and higher, the two boys stared at one another in silence. Yes, where were they? Who could tell? They were not trained mariners. They could not have taken a reckoning even had they been in possession of the needed instruments.
"Why," said Alfred hesitatingly, "we must be somewhere near that spot where the island was supposed to be located. That's as near as we can come to it. Send out that latitude and longitude; then we'll climb back into the air. We'll be safer there than on the water and we can keep the searchlight shooting out flashes in all directions. A ship coming to our aid will see the light."
"If they come," Vincent whispered.
"Hurry!" exclaimed Alfred, as a giant wave, rising above its mates, threatened to tear their plane into shreds.
With benumbed and trembling fingers the boy unwrapped his instruments, adjusted a coil, twisted a knob and threw in his switch. Then his heart stood still. The motor did not start. Had it been dampened and short-circuited? Would it refuse to go? Were they already lost?
Just as he was giving up in despair, there came a humming sound and a moment later the well-known signal of distress had been flashed out across the waves. Three times he repeated it. Three times in a few sharp words he told their general location and their plight. Then with wildly beating heart, he pressed the receivers to his ears and awaited a reply.
A moment passed, two, three, four; but there came no answering call. Only the buzz and snap of the ever-increasing static greeted his straining ears.
Once more he sent out the message; again he listened. Still no response.
"C'm'on," came from the boy below. "It's getting dangerous. You can get a message off in the air. Gotta get out o' here. Gotta climb. May not be able to make it even now."
As the other boy glanced down at the white-capped waves all about them he realized that his companion spoke the truth.
Hurriedly rewrapping his instruments, all but the receivers, which by the aid of an extension he brought down with him, he made his way to his seat and strapped on his harness.
"All right," he breathed.
Once more the motors thundered. For a long distance they raced through blinding spray. Little by little this diminished until with a swoop, like a sea gull, the magnificent plane shot upward. The next instant they felt a dash of cold rain upon their cheeks. Was the storm upon them? Or was this merely a warning dash which had reached them far in advance of the deluge? For the moment they could not tell.
For an hour Curlie Carson had been seated in the radiophone cabin of the Kittlewake. During that time his delicately adjusted amplifier and his wonderful ears had enabled him to pick up many weird and unusual messages. Listening in at sea before a great storm is like wandering on the beach after that same storm; you never can tell what you may pick up. But though fragments of many messages had come to him, not one of any importance to the Kittlewake had reached his ears. If during that time any message from the Stormy Petrel had been sent out, it had been lost in the crash and snap of static which now kept up a constant din in his ears.
Again doubt assailed him. He had no positive knowledge that the boys in the plane had gone in search of that mysterious island of the old chart. They might, for all he knew, be at this moment enjoying a rich feast on some island off the coast of America.
"Cuba, for instance," he told himself. "Not at all impossible. Short trip for such a seaplane."
"And here," he grumbled angrily to himself, "here I am risking my own life and the life of my companions and crew, inviting death to all these, and this on a mere conjecture. Guess I'm a fool."
The gale was rising every moment. Even as he spoke the prow of the boat reared in air, to come down with such an impact as made one believe she had stepped on something solid.
Just when Curlie's patience with himself and all the rest of the world was exhausted, Joe Marion opened the door. The wind, boosting him across the threshold, slammed the door after him.
"Whew!" he sputtered. "Going to be rotten. Tell you what, I don't like it. Dangerous, I'd say!"
"Nothing's dangerous," smiled Curlie, greatly pleased to see that someone at least was more disturbed than himself. "Nothing's really dangerous since the invention of the radiophone. Ocean, desert, Arctic wilderness; it's all the same. Sick, lost, shipwrecked? All you've got to do is keep your head clear and your radiophone dry and tuned up. It'll find you a way out."
"Yes, but," hesitated Joe, "how the deuce you going to pack a radiophone outfit, all those coils, batteries and boxes, when you're shipwrecked? How you going to keep 'em dry with the rain pelting you from above and the salt water beating at you from below? Lot of sense to that! Huh!" he grunted contemptuously. "That for your radiophone!" He snapped his finger. "And that for your old sloppy ocean! Give me a square yard of good old terra firma and I'll get along without all your modern inventions."
"It can be done, though," said Curlie thoughtfully.
"Radiophone kept dry after a wreck at sea."
"How?"
Curlie did not answer the question. Instead, he snapped the receiver from his head and handed it to Joe.
"Take this and listen in." He rose stiffly. "This business is getting on my nerves. I've got to get out for a breath of splendid fresh sea breeze."
"Nerves?" said Joe incredulously. "You got nerves?"
"Sometimes. Just now I have."
On the deck Curlie experienced difficulty in walking. As he worked his way forward he found that one moment his legs were far too long and his foot came down with a suddenness that set his teeth chattering; the next moment his legs had grown suddenly short. It was like stepping down stairs in the dark and taking two steps at a time when you expected to take but one.
"Never saw such a rumpus on the sea," he grumbled. "Going to be worse," he told himself as a chain of lightning, leaping across the sky, illumined the bank of black clouds that lay before them. "Going to be lots worse."
Poking his head into the wheel-house, he bellowed above the storm: "How's she go?"
"Seen worse'n 'er," the skipper shouted back.
"Ought to be at the spot we started for in half an hour—that island on the old chart."
"Never was no island," the skipper roared.
"Maybe not."
"Supposin' we get there, what then?"
"Don't know yet."
The skipper stared at Curlie for a full moment as if attempting to determine whether he were insane, then turned in silence to his wheel.
The wind blew the door shut and Curlie resumed his long-legged, short-legged march.
He had done three turns around the deck when his eyes caught a small figure crumpled up on the pile of ropes forward.
"Hello," he cried, "you out here?"
Gladys did not answer at once. She was straining her eyes as if to see some object which might be hovering above the jagged, sea-swept skyline.
"No," said Curlie, as if in answer to a question, "you couldn't see the plane. You couldn't see it fifty fathoms away and then it would flash by you like a carrier pigeon. No use if you did see it. Couldn't do anything. But there's one chance in a million of their coming into our line of vision, so it's no use watching. Only chance is a radiophone message giving their location."
"But I—I want to. I—I ought to do something." For the first time he noticed how white and drawn her face was.
"All right," he said in a quiet voice, "you just sit where you are and I'll sit here beside you and you tell me one or two things. That will help."
"Tell—tell what?"
"Tell me this: Did your brother have the original of that old map?"
"Yes," her tone was already quieting down, "yes, he did, or Alfred Brightwood did. His father is very rich and he has a hobby of collecting very old editions of books. He pays terrible prices for them. He bought an old, old copy of 'Marco Polo's Travels'; paid fifteen thousand dollars for it. And inside its cover Alfred found that old map with the curious writing on the back of it.
"He thought right away that it might hide some great secret, so he had it photographed and sent the photo to Vincent. Vincent got a great scholar to read the writing for him. He never told me what the writing was; said that no one but he and Alfred should know; that it was a great secret and that girls couldn't keep secrets, so I was not to know.
"But they can keep secrets!" she exploded, breaking off from her narrative. "They do keep secrets—more secrets than boys do. Wonderful and terrible secrets sometimes!"
"All right," smiled Curlie, "I agree with you, absolutely, but what did they do then?"
"Well," the girl pressed her temples as if to drive the thoughts of the present from her. "They—why then Alfred called Vincent by radiophone on 600. Vincent was terribly afraid to answer on 600, but he did. And then, because he thought the discovery of the map was so awfully important, he rigged up a radiophone on his auto and I—I"—she buried her face in her hands—"I helped him. I was with him in the car; drove while he sent the messages, all but that last night, when the car was wrecked.
"I—I know I shouldn't have done it. I knew all the time it was wrong, but Alfred was stubborn and wouldn't talk on anything but 600—said he had as much right on 600 as anyone else—so we did it."
"And then the car was wrecked?" suggested Curlie. He felt a trifle mean about making the girl tell, but he knew she would be more comfortable once she got it out of her system. People are that way.
"Yes," she said, "someone shot his tire and wrecked his machine. I found the car, first thing in the morning, and when I saw Vincent wasn't there I got two big packing baskets that we once used in the Rockies and put them on my horse. Then I went back and got all that radio stuff and took it home and hid it. Do you think I did wrong?" The eyes she turned to his were appealing ones.
"Maybe you did," said Curlie huskily, "but that doesn't matter now; you're paying for it all right—going to pay for it in full before this voyage is over. The thing you must try to think of now is the present, the little round present that is right here now. And you must try to be brave."
"And—and"—she said in a faltering voice—"do you think Vincent is paying for what he did?"
"I shouldn't be surprised."
"Then you won't have to arrest him if he's already punished?" The appealing eyes were again upon him.
At that moment Curlie did a strange thing, so strange that the words sounded preposterous to his own ears:
"No," he said slowly, "I won't, unless—unless he asks me to."
"Oh!" she breathed, "thank you." She placed her icy-cold hand on his for a second.
"You're freezing!" he exclaimed suddenly. "You'll be making yourself sick. You must get inside!"
"I'll go to the lounging cabin in mid-deck. The forecastle is so—so lonesome," she stammered. "If you need me, you'll find me there."
Feeling her way along the rail, she disappeared into the darkness.
At almost the same moment there came the bellowing sound of a voice that could be heard above the roar of the storm:
"Curlie! Curlie! Come here! Something coming in. Can't make it out!"
It was Joe Marion. Stumbling aft, now banging his feet down hard and now treading on empty air, Curlie made his way to the radiophone cabin.
"It's an S. O. S.," screamed Joe at the top of his voice, as Curlie came hurrying up. "They sent that much in code and I got it all right. Then they tried to tell me their troubles and all I got was a mumble and grumble mixed with static, which meant nothing at all to me. Repeated it three times. Very little space in between. Should have called you, I guess, but there really wasn't time; besides I kept thinking I'd start getting what he sent."
"Where'd it come from?" Curlie asked as he snapped the receiver over his head.
"Straight out of the storm. Fifty or sixty miles northeast."
Curlie groaned. "That's what I get for being impatient. Ought to have stayed right here. It's those boys all right and we've missed them; may never pick them up again."
For a time there was silence in the wireless cabin, such a silence as one experiences in the midst of a rising storm. The flap of ropes, the creak of yard-arms, the rush of waves which were already washing the deck, the chug-chug-chug of the prow of the brave little craft as she leaped from wave-crest to wave-crest; all this made such music as an orchestra might, had every man musician of them gone mad. And this was the "silence" Curlie did not for a long time break.
"Well!" he shouted at last, "that settles one thing. I was right. They did go in search of that mythical island."
"You can't be sure," said Joe. "Might have been a fishing boat led off her course by a chase after a whale. You never can tell."
"No, that's right," Curlie agreed.
"What makes you so sure the island on that map is mythical?" asked Joe.
"Doesn't sound reasonable."
"Lots of things don't. Take the radiophone; it wouldn't have sounded reasonable a few years ago. Lot of new things wouldn't. A new island is discovered somewhere about every year. Why not around here?"
"Anyway, I don't believe it," shouted Curlie.
Yet, after all, as he thought of it now he found himself hoping against hope that there was some such island. It wasn't the gold he was thinking of, but a haven of refuge. This storm was going to be a bad one. He fancied it was going to be one of the worst experienced on the Atlantic for years. If only there were somewhere a sheltered nook into which this cockleshell of a craft they were riding on might be driven, it would bring him great relief. He thought a little of Joe, of the skipper and the engineer, but he thought a great deal about the girl.
"No place for a girl," he mumbled. "Perhaps," he tried to tell himself, "there is an island, a very small island overlooked for centuries by navigators; perhaps those boys have found it. Perhaps they were merely sending out an S. O. S. to get someone to bring them gas to carry them home. But rat!" he exploded, "I don't believe it. Don't—"
He cut himself short to press the receivers tight against his ears. He was getting something. Quickly he manipulated the coil of his radio compass. Yes, it was an S. O. S.! And, yes, it was coming directly out of the storm. But what was this they were saying? "Two boys—" He got that much, but what was that? Strain his ears as he might, he could not catch another word.
But now—now he believed he was about to get it. Moving the coil backward and forward he strained every muscle in his face in a mad effort to understand. Yes, yes, that was it! Then, just as he was getting it a terrible thing happened. There came a blinding flash of light, accompanied by a rending, tearing, deafening crash. He felt himself seized by some invisible power which wrenched every muscle, twisted every joint in his body, then flung him limp and motionless to the floor.
When he came to himself, Joe and the girl were bending over him. Joe was tearing at the buttons of his shirt. The girl was rocking backward and forward. All but overcome with excitement, she was still attempting to chafe his right hand. When she saw him open his eyes she uttered a little cry, then toppled over in a dead faint.
"Wha—what happened?" Curlie's lips framed the words.
"Lightning," shouted Joe. "Protectors must have got damp. Short-circuited. Raised hob. Burned out about everything, I guess."
"Can't be as bad as that. Tend to the girl," Curlie nodded toward the corner.
Joe ducked out of the cabin, to appear a moment later with a cold, damp cloth. This he spread over the girl's forehead. A moment later she sat up and looked about her.
Curlie was sitting up also. He was rubbing his head. When he saw the girl looking at him he laughed and sang:
"Oh, a sailor's life is a merry life,
And it's a sailor's life for me.
"But say!" he exclaimed suddenly, "what was I doing when things went to pieces?"
Joe nodded toward the radiophone desk where coils and instruments lay piled in tangled confusion.
"You were getting a message from out the storm."
"Oh yes, and they gave me their location. It was—no, I haven't it. Lightning drove it right out of my head. Let me think. Let me concentrate."
For a full moment there was silence, the silence of the raging sea. Then Curlie shook his head sadly.
"No, I can't remember," his lips framed the words. It was unnecessary that he shout them aloud.
"Oh!" exclaimed the girl, and for a moment it seemed that she would faint again. But she controlled herself bravely.
"We'll find them yet," she forced a brave smile. "It's a comfort just to know they're still alive, that they're near us, at least not too far away for us to save them if we can only find them."
Again there was silence. Then Curlie rose unsteadily to his feet.
"Give us a hand here, Joe, old scout," he said. "We'll get this thing back in shape. There are extra vacuum tubes, tuning-coils and the like, and plenty of all kinds of wire. We'll manage it somehow—got to."
The girl rose, to sink upon a seat in the corner.
"That's right," shouted Curlie. "You stay right here. We'll be company for each other. Fellow needs company on a night like this. Besides, I've got something to say, a lot to say, to you and Joe as soon as the radiophone is tuned up again. Got to say it before I get killed again," he chuckled.
The dash of rain which beat like a volley of lead upon the fuselage of the seaplane as she rose above the spray lasted but a moment.
"Just a warning of what's to come," Vincent called through the tube. "Think we could run away from the storm?"
"We'd just get lost on the ocean and not know what location to radiophone," grumbled his companion. "Better keep circling. We can get above the storm if we must."
Once more the weary circle was commenced. With little hope of sighting land, Vincent still fixed his gaze upon the black waters below, while he sent the flash of light, now far to the right, now to the left, and now straight beneath them.
"Someone must have caught our S. O. S." he told himself. "We ought to get sight of their lights pretty soon. But then," his hopes grew faint, "not many ships in these seas. Might not have heard us. Might not be able to reach us. Might—"
He broke off abruptly. A blinding flash of lightning had illumined the waters for miles in every direction. In that flash his eyes had seen something; at least, he thought they had; some craft away to the left of them; a craft which reminded him of one he had sailed upon many a time; his father's yacht, the Kittlewake.
"But of course it couldn't be," he told himself. "Nobody'd be crazy enough to—"
A second flash illumined the water, but this time, strain his eyes as he might, he caught no glimpse of craft of any sort.
"Must have dreamed it," he muttered. He closed his eyes for a second and in that second saw his sister Gladys clearly mirrored on his mind's vision. She was staggering down a pitching deck.
"Huh!" he muttered, shaking himself violently, "this business is getting my goat. I'll be delirious if I don't watch out."
Again he fixed his gaze upon the spot of light as it traveled over the water.
He had kept steadily at the task for fifteen minutes, was wondering how much longer the gas would hold out, wondering, too, whether the storm was ever going to break, when he caught the pilot's signal in the tube.
"How about trying another message?" his companion called.
"Up here?" he asked in dismay.
"I know—awful dangerous. But we've got to risk something. Lost if we don't."
"All right, I'll try." He began cautiously to unbuckle his harness.
Scarcely had he loosened two of the three straps which held him in place when the plane gave a sudden lurch. Having struck a pocket, it dropped like an elevator cage released from its cable, straight down.
"Oh—ah!" he exclaimed as he caught at a rod just in time to escape being hurled away.
"Got to be careful," he told himself, "awful careful! Have to hold on with one hand while I work with the other. Feet'll help too."
When the plane had settled again, he loosened the last strap, then began with the utmost caution to drag himself to the surface of the plane above him.
Once a vivid flash of lightning showed him the dizzy depths beneath him. He was at that moment clinging to a rod with both hands. His legs were twined about a second. Thus he hung suspended out over two thousand feet of air and as many fathoms of water.
For a moment a dizzy sickness overcame him, but this passed away. Again he struggled to gain the platform above. This time he was successful.
Even here he did not abandon caution. The straps were still about his waist. One of these he fastened to a rod. Then with one hand he clung to the framework before him, while with the other he worked at the task of adjusting instruments.
"Slow business," he murmured. "Maybe it won't work when I get through. Maybe too damp. Maybe it—"
Suddenly he found himself floating in air, like the tail of a kite. Only the strap and his viselike grip saved him. The plane had struck another pocket.
He was at last thrown back upon the platform with such force as dashed the air from his lungs and a large part of his senses from his brain.
After a moment of mental struggle he resumed his task. He worked feverishly now. The fear that he might be seriously injured before he had completed it had seized him.
"Now," he breathed at last, "now we'll see!"
His hand touched a switch. The motor buzzed.
"Ah! She works! She works!" he exulted.
Then with trembling fingers he sent out the signal of distress. He followed this with their location, also in code. Three times he repeated the message. Then snapping on his receiver, he strained his ear to listen.
"Ah!—" his lips parted. He was getting something. Was it an answer? He could scarcely believe his ears. Yet it came distinctly:
"Yacht Kittlewake, Curlie—"
Just at that moment the plane gave a sickening swerve. Caught off his balance, the boy was thrown clear off the platform. The receiver connection snapped. He hung suspended by the single strap. Madly his hands flew out to grasp at the pitching rods. Just in time he seized them; the strap had broken.
With the agility of a squirrel he let himself down to his old place behind his companion. To buckle on the remaining straps was the work of a moment. Then, in utter exhaustion and despair, he allowed his head to sink upon his chest.
"And I was getting—getting an answer," he gasped.
His companion had seen nothing of his fall. Glancing behind him for a second, he saw Vincent in his seat in the fuselage.
"What'd you come down for?"
"Got shaken down."
"Get anything?"
"Was getting. Queer thing that! Got the name of my father's yacht and the word 'Curly.' Then the plane lurched and spilled me off. Jerked the receiver off too. Queer about that message! Thought I saw the Kittlewake on the sea a while ago, but then I thought it couldn't be—thought I was getting delirious or something."
"Going back up?"
"I—I'll—In a moment or two I'll try."
A few moments later he did try, but it was no use. His nerve was gone. His knees trembled so he could scarcely stand. His hands shook as with the palsy. It is a terrible thing for a climber to lose his nerve while in the air.
"No use," he told himself. "I'd only get shaken off again and next time I'd be out of luck. Shame too, just when I was getting things."
Again he caught his companion's call.
"Storm's almost here! Guess we'll have to climb."
Even as he spoke, there came a flash of lightning which revealed a solid black bank of clouds which seemed a wall of ebony. It was moving rapidly toward them; was all but upon them.
"Better climb; climb quick," he breathed through the tube.