Thus, in thousands and thousands of years, had grown up the island. Ruth had told Tess and Dot all about the formation of such bits of land, and the little girls had been much interested in the story. Now, in the fast-dimming evening light, they watched the green and white edge of the little island the boat was approaching with some uncertainty in the mind of Tess as well as of Dot.

If they did bump into that island what was in store for them?

“I—I guess,” said Tess, finally, “we’d better go downstairs into the cabin and go to bed; and—and—let her bump.”

CHAPTER XIX—THE RAFT

Mr. Howbridge could say nothing to aid Ruth or the others or to make them feel more cheerful. The absence of Tess and Dot was a thing that could not be lessened by any further talk. Even now, in the pitch darkness of the tropical night, the Isobel might have come to grief and the children be cast into the sea.

These thoughts were so bitter that occasionally the lawyer groaned aloud. Luke, clinging to one of Ruth’s hands, felt the girl tremble every time her guardian gave voice to his bitter feelings. Agnes sobbed now and then convulsively. And for once Neale could find no silver lining to this cloud of trouble.

The little girls had often caused the older ones anxiety; they had been lost; they had got into mischief that might have proved dangerous; but this situation seemed far and away more terrible than anything that had previously happened to the Corner House girls.

Tess and Dot had drifted away once in a boat at Pleasant Cove, but Tom Jonah, the faithful, had then been in their company. Now they were adrift on an unknown sea, in the dark, and with a hundred perils threatening them. Ruth felt that never before had her little sisters been in such danger while she was unable to lift a finger to help them.

She scarcely touched the food placed before her. Even Luke could not comfort Ruth Kenway now. In her mind continually danced possibilities of disaster for the two children who, since their mother’s death, she had attended so closely.

Her early duties as “little mother” had made Ruth seem really older than her years. Her thoughtfulness for her three sisters had made her different from other girls. Agnes often declared that Ruth “couldn’t have any fun” because of the duties that took first place in her mind and in her life.

The release from care that had been joined with the coming of the four Kenways and their Aunt Sarah Maltby to the Corner House in Milton had not entirely erased from Ruth’s mind certain remembrances connected with their previous poverty in Bloomsburg. This fact, perhaps, made her all the more charitable and thoughtful for other people’s troubles.

And now the occasion called up in the older girl’s mind the most doleful thoughts and surmises. What might not happen to Tess and Dot out on the sea in that unmanageable boat?

Ruth Kenway retired to the tent and nobody but Agnes followed to comfort her. And Agnes was not much of a comforter. She gave way too easily to her own despair to be of help to her sister.

The latter heard Mr. Howbridge and the boys talking together over the embers of the fire long after Agnes had fallen into a restless sleep. For her own part, Ruth could not sleep. She could not even close her eyes.

The question which she knew was discussed by her three companions outside her tent before they rolled up in their blankets was the question that fretted persistently the girl’s mind: How to reach Tess and Dot on the drifting boat?

If it was still adrift! Suppose it had crashed upon some rock—some island shore? Suppose the Isobel had really been wrecked at last? A hole stove in her hull, perhaps, and the craft even now sinking with the helpless children upon it?

Then Ruth heard the gentle soughing of the waves on the strand below the camp, and she took heart again. The sea was so quiet, the wind was so gentle, it scarcely seemed possible that the Isobel could be wrecked. But the wind and the current were both driving the motor-boat away from Palm Island if, by chance, she was not cast away.

The fact of disaster Ruth tried to deny. The sea was so gentle even the lightest bark must be safe upon it. There was practically no surf. The waves merely lapped against the strand with a very soothing and reassuring noise.

“Why, a mere raft would not be in danger!” the girl thought.

And with this conclusion there suddenly stabbed her mind the thought that the means of following and rescuing Tess and Dot might lie in the very thing she pictured. A raft.

There were plenty of trees upon Palm Island, as well as much flotsam timber on the shores of it. There was a heavy boat ax and a few other tools that had been removed, fortunately enough, from the Isobel. In the jungle were green vines and lianas as tough in fiber as commercial rope. She knew just how the raft could be built and where. They could strike the tent and make a big sail of it. If the trade wind continued to blow, and she was sure it would do so, for its direction had been the same since they had left St. Sergius, the raft would be propelled in the same general direction as the Isobel.

She sat up and threw off her coverings. She could not wait until morning to discuss this thing with Luke. When she peered out through the tent opening only the blinking embers of the fire gave any light in the wood at all. But she heard her friends breathing near her.

Luke was nearest. She crept over to him and shook the young fellow by the shoulder.

“All right!” muttered the collegian. “What’s up?”

“I am,” said Ruth, in a shaky whisper.

“Is anything the matter?”

“Of course there is,” cried the girl, but under her breath. “Aren’t those blessed children in danger?”

“But, Ruth! We can’t help that just now. Not while it’s dark.”

“And what are you going to do when light comes?” demanded Ruth, with some exasperation.

Luke Shepard groaned. What could he say to soothe the girl of whom he was so very fond?

“Hadn’t you better try to get some sleep, Ruth?” he finally said.

But he did not wholly know Ruth Kenway, much as he admired her. He had not known her in the days when she had borne the entire burden of the Kenways’ domestic troubles. He had no idea that her very active mind was bound to exert itself until some reasonable method of helping Tess and Dot was evolved.

“Listen!” she commanded, sternly. “Listen, Luke. The children must be brought back.”

“Oh, Ruthie!”

“It may sound impossible to you, but it isn’t impossible. It means hard work, and you boys and Mr. Howbridge must practically do it all. But I have thought of a way.”

“Goodness me!” gasped Luke, sitting up quickly. “Come away from here. Don’t wake Mr. Howbridge. You can tell me first, can’t you?”

“I mean to tell you first,” declared Ruth, quite undisturbed by his expressed doubt.

Luke hurried her away from the camp. They reached the open beach where the starlight gave to the scene a bland radiance. At another time both the young people would have considered it a lovely view and would have spoken of it. But now——

“What is it you have thought of, Ruth?” demanded the youth, holding her hand and looking closely at her.

“I know how we can—how we must—go after Tess and Dot.”

“Oh, Ruth!”

She explained. The idea of a good-sized raft, with sail and two oars (these had belonged to the Isobel), was rapidly sketched by the girl in no faltering accents. Luke soon began to take fire at her plan. His eyes sparkled and he could scarcely wait for her to complete her details.

“Ruth! It’s a wonder of an idea! Of course we can!”

“Oh!” she said with a sudden sob, “if it were only daylight. All the time the dear little things are floating farther and farther away.”

“Don’t say another word!” exclaimed Luke, eagerly. “I don’t care if it is dark! Wait! What time is it?” He struck a match and looked at his wrist watch. “Twelve-twenty-five. The darkest time of all the night, but you can see pretty well out here on the shore. There are plenty of fallen logs at the edge of the grove, over toward the inlet where the Isobel lay.”

“So there are, Luke.”

“We’ll want to build the raft there. Then we can push her out right into the wake of the motorboat. I’ll wake Neale. Don’t disturb your guardian yet. Neale and I can do a lot before morning.”

“Oh, Luke,” she sighed, “you are such a comfort.”

Luke sped back to the camp and shook Neale awake in a jiffy, and without hearing the anxious girl’s approbation.

“Wha-what’s the matter?” asked the younger youth, sitting up and rubbing his eyes vigorously. “Nobody’s come to rescue us, has there, Luke?”

“Hush!” commanded the collegian. “No. But we’ve found a way to go after Tess and Dot.”

“Crackey!” gasped Neale, struggling out from under the blanket. “It will be a long, hard swim, Luke. I had thought of that.”

“Ruth has got an idea—and a good one,” declared Luke.

“Oh, that puts another face upon the matter, as the fellow said when he put on his masque at the costume ball. Ruth is a regular ‘go-getter’ when it comes to ideas. What is it?”

He hurried after Luke through the grove and they came out upon the easterly point of Palm Island, where the rocky reefs guarded the inlet whence the motor-boat had floated away.

Luke had already begun in a low voice to explain to Neale the details of Ruth’s idea. The younger fellow was immediately excited. The idea of making a raft that would bear them all up and float them over the quiet sea in pursuit of the motor-boat seemed the most feasible thing in the world.

Perhaps, if Mr. Howbridge had been awakened at this time, his riper judgment might have pointed out facts that would have seemed to show flaws in Ruth’s idea. But Luke and Neale accepted the plan at its face value and went to work immediately. As well as they could in the starlight they began to drag certain fallen tree trunks together on the shore by the deep inlet, ready for the real task of building the raft. They had a rope and with its aid dragged the logs through the sands.

Agnes awoke and came out and insisted upon helping the young fellows. Ruth, too, was too restless and excited to remain idle. Before dawn—oh, long before!—all four of them had aching shoulders and backs and blistered palms. But they worked on without complaint, believing that they were at last doing something practical toward the recovery of the lost children.

CHAPTER XX—THE FLAG ON THE TREE-TOP

“I suppose even that might be done,” admitted Mr. Howbridge. “But, you know, there are five of us, and we are of some weight. The raft must cover sufficient area to bear us up, and the children as well when we get them, if, perchance, the motor-boat should be unusable.”

“Those logs do float pretty deep in the water,” observed Neale.

“Green logs,” said Luke, joining in. “They are almost awash.”

“Can’t we use the seasoned timber along shore?” asked Ruth, faintly.

“Not so well,” Luke said thoughtfully. “You see, that is of all sizes and shapes. The easiest way to build the raft is with these trimmed logs. But most of the trees were felled during that small hurricane which brought us to the island.”

“Oh!” wailed Agnes, “don’t say that it can’t be done.”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Howbridge, briskly. “We are going to bind those timbers together right after we have eaten, step a mast, bend a sail, and set sail. But we must not make the raft too cumbersome; therefore we cannot all embark in this venture.”

“Oh!” murmured Ruth.

But Agnes shouted: “I’m going! I don’t care, Guardy Howbridge! If Neale goes, I’m going.”

“Agnes!” murmured Ruth, putting a restraining hand upon her sister’s arm.

“You’re going, I suppose, Agnes, even if you have to walk?” chuckled Mr. Howbridge, for he knew the obstreperous Agnes pretty well by this time.

“I don’t care——”

“Yes, you do, child,” said the lawyer more earnestly. “You care very much about getting Tess and Dot back safely. We may have much difficulty in managing the raft. Especially on our return. The boat may be broken, or perhaps we cannot finish repairing the mechanism when we overtake it.

“We must build a raft of limited capacity. It must hold the boys and me, and the children, of course. But the added weight of you and Ruth might sink it so deeply that it could not be managed. You girls will remain here——”

“Alone?” gasped Agnes.

“No. Together,” put in Neale.

“Oh, Guardy!” exclaimed Ruth, “will that be necessary? Are you sure?”

“It is a physical impossibility for us to make these green logs float higher than they do,” said Mr. Howbridge dryly. “Some tropical timber is corky and very light. Not these palm logs. To build the raft of drift timber is, as you can see yourself, my dear, impossible. We must use what we have to hand, and use it at once.”

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!” murmured Ruth. “There must be no more delay.”

“It will take our best efforts to manage the raft. If the wind holds fair that canvas will make a splendid sail; but it will have to be tended all the time or half of the wind will be spilled, as the sailors say. Two of us at the sail and one at the steering oar. You two girls will have to remain behind.”

“It is not so much the staying here,” said Ruth shakenly. “But I wanted to find the children myself and make sure they are all right.”

“You will have to trust that to us,” said Mr. Howbridge. “I do not believe for a moment that anything will happen to you girls here on Palm Island.”

“Oh, I am not afraid,” Ruth rejoined faintly.

“I think the camp should be moved over to the spring. There is a sheltered place in the side of the hill within ten yards of the spring—almost a cave. As we must take your tent——”

“Don’t bother about us!” cried Ruth. “Hurry and finish your raft.”

But Mr. Howbridge and the two young fellows were determined to leave Ruth and Agnes in as comfortable a situation as possible. In the first place, although no one dwelt on the thought, nobody could tell how long they would be gone from Palm Island.

It was all very well to consider that there was a fair wind blowing away from the island, one that would presumably drive the raft on the course followed by the drifting motor-boat. But how would they ever be able to beat up against this same wind on their return?

Even Neale and Agnes kept still about this. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Once they find the two little girls and the motor-boat, everything else must come right. That was the way the young people looked at it, anyway.

The repairs upon the engine of the Isobel had been all but complete. If the boat had not been wrecked upon one of the small islands, the trio hoped to finish the repairs easily and bring the craft back to Palm Island in triumph.

Now the party made haste to transfer all their belongings from the point where the old camp had been established to that spot west of the hill, at the spring. The spring was a fair-flowing stream that bubbled out from under a rock and had worn a course for itself in the sands to high water mark. When the party had first walked around the island they had overlooked this tiny rivulet, as the tide had been coming in and the brackish water had flowed up the course of it.

Agnes climbed the hill to the very foot of the huge palm, carrying an old pair of binoculars with her. She came down with flying hair and excited eyes.

“There is something flapping in the top of a palm tree on that first island! I can see it as plain as plain!” she cried.

“What is it—an old carrion crow?” demanded Neale.

“I don’t mean that it is alive,” returned Agnes. “It is a flag or something!”

“Do you suppose it is something the children have put up to attract our attention?” cried Ruth.

“If it is in the top of a tree, how did they get it up there?” questioned Luke.

“We-ell. They put up something in the boat; Tess’s skirt, I think,” Ruth said.

They could not stop to investigate Agnes Kenway’s discovery at this time. But when they went back to the inlet where the raft lay, Mr. Howbridge climbed upon a rock with the glasses and examined the fluttering thing which Agnes had marked in the tree-top on the first island of the chain to the east.

There was no other sign of life or occupancy; but certain it was that some sort of pennant fluttered in the breeze. Tess and Dot could not, of course, have climbed so high to fasten a signal of distress, even had they thought of doing such a thing; but this mysterious pennant seemed a promise that the island was occupied.

If the little voyagers had come in the drifting motor-boat to this island and been stranded, they might have found somebody already there—somebody who would take care of them.

Ruth’s mind was a little relieved by this thought. Perhaps Tess and Dot were not entirely alone. The thought of their having remained alone over night on the sea or on the lonely strand had made the older sister acutely miserable.

She and Agnes saw the two boys and Mr. Howbridge set sail upon the rude raft with less anxiety than they would have felt had they realized how treacherous both the sea and the weather was in this locality. They had forgotten, in this new trouble, the savageness and abruptness of the storm that had cast them all upon Palm Island.

The raft blundered out of the inlet, the boys guiding it with the oars. But the great, square sail was already bent upon the mast and one yard. As Mr. Howbridge had said, as soon as they were really adrift Luke and Neale had to “tend sheet.” They had to keep the canvas trimmed all the time to hold the wind.

The raft began to move at a pace that momentarily increased. A little ruffle of white water showed before the blunt nose of the heavy craft. The girls, standing with clasped hands on the rocky shore, watched the ponderously moving raft with great anxiety.

Now and then one of the boys turned to wave a confident hand to Ruth and Agnes. But both Luke and Neale, as well as Mr. Howbridge, felt more worriment for the safety of Ruth and Agnes than they cared to have the girls imagine.

They had been several days on Palm Island and had seen no vessel in the offing but their own and had marked no trace on the island of any former occupant. It might seem that there was really nothing on or about Palm Island to bring to it any person, either kindly or evilly disposed.

There was one thing, however, that Neale O’Neil had pointed out to Mr. Howbridge. They had considered the possibility in secret of certain fellows of the baser sort coming to the place, but nothing of this had been said before the girls. If they had not thought of that themselves, it was not desirable to bring it to their attention and burden them with one more anxiety.

The three masculine members of the party of castaways had absolutely to go in search of Tess and Dot. The raft could not be made big enough to transport in safety Ruth and Agnes too. Would the raft return? This was a desperate situation.

The girls watched the raft move heavily away in the white glare of the sun, now almost overhead. The blot of shadow cast by the huge sail was very narrow. The glare of the view at last so blinded them that Ruth and Agnes retired to the covert of the cocoanut grove.

From this vantage point they could see the raft as it rose and fell upon the long, sweeping surges. Slowly, but steadily, it moved away from Palm Island toward that islet on which the flag had appeared and upon which Ruth hoped the children had taken refuge.

After the raft was so far away that the boys and girls could not shout back and forth to each other, it seemed that it moved very slowly indeed. Yet as the hours wore on the distance between the shore of Palm Island and the raft could be plainly marked.

The figures of the trio upon the raft were dwarfed at last to the size of manikins. The sail looked like a palm-leaf fan. The raft itself, rising and falling on the surge, became very small, and to the girls’ anxious eyes it seemed nearer to that distant island than to this one on which they were marooned.

“Come,” said Ruth at last, sadly. “Let us go over to the spring and get some supper and go to bed. Watching them any longer will do no good. We cannot help. We can only trust that God will be good to us all. We’ll hope for the best.”

Even the usually voluble Agnes could say nothing cheerful in reply, and the two girls moved away from the point of their vigil.

CHAPTER XXI—A NIGHT ALARM

Their minds not only reverted constantly to the question of the whereabouts of Tess and Dot, but the question of the safety of their boy friends and their guardian was now added to that first anxiety. Ruth and Agnes did not consider that they were in any immediate personal danger. The thought that they might be left indefinitely on this lonely island they resolutely kept out of the forefront of their minds. But wreck and disaster might have overtaken both the other parties.

Agnes had climbed the hill just before the night fell and tried to spy the raft again. But she could not distinguish it. In fact, that nearest island on which they had seen the flag flying was almost blotted out.

“We cannot see anything until morning,” Ruth told her. “I believe Mr. Howbridge and the boys got to the island. If the children are there, then it is all right.”

“All right?” repeated Agnes, with a sniff. “How can you say that? Nothing will be all right again, I guess, until we get back to the Corner House. I wish we had never come South.”

“We could not foresee all this trouble,” rejoined her sister soothingly. “We must not give up hope, Aggie.”

“Humph!”

“If I only knew that Tess and Dot were safe I would feel better. Lots of people have worse troubles than this. Think of what the poor Pendletons are going through, for instance.”

“Well, at least,” declared Agnes, “the Pendletons have a roof over their heads.”

“Ye-es,” agreed Ruth thoughtfully. “And they are all together.”

“They have somebody to help them too,” Agnes went on more energetically. “I am sure Guardy’s clerk will dig up some evidence to clear Mr. Pendleton. It only takes time. But we haven’t a soul to help us, Ruthie.”

“I wonder what the folks at St. Sergius think about our absence,” murmured the older girl. “Guardy’s friend, Señor Benno, ought to suspect that we are in some difficulty.”

“I wish he’d send a boat for us—right now!” cried Agnes. “Then we could go after the boys and the raft.”

“And find Tess and Dot,” added Ruth. “This is a dreadful thing, Agnes!”

“Who would have thought they’d do such a thing?” was Agnes’ vigorous speech. “I’m always expecting them to get into mischief when Sammy Pinkney is along. But one would think that with him thousands of miles away, Tess and Dot could be trusted for half an hour alone.”

“I can’t blame them,” sighed Ruth. “Of course they had no intention of sailing away with the motor-boat. It was an accident.”

“And we can’t do a thing to help,” said her sister gloomily, and cuddled down in her blanket.

Worried as she really was, Agnes was not long awake. Ruth tossed and turned and, as on the night before, could not compose herself to sleep. Each faint sound from the sea aroused her sharply. Were their friends coming back? Had they found the motor-boat and the children and repaired the former and brought back the latter?

Thus between sleeping and waking Ruth Kenway lay until long after midnight. A faint mist, as usual, rose from the sea and rolled inshore, masking every object with a soft and glowing mantle. She watched these wisps of fog until her nerves were “jumpy” and her troubled mind was filled with strange imaginings.

Figures seemed stalking along the open shore; but she knew they made no sound and left no footprints on the sand. They were merely phantoms of her overwrought thought.

Then suddenly, but so sharply that she could not deny its existence, something clattered out there on the sea. She sat up with a gasp and reached a nervous hand toward her sister.

Then she waited. Why arouse Agnes and frighten her? It might not be anything of consequence.

The sound was repeated. Ruth could not identify its cause, but she knew it could be no marine creature. It was no noise made by the turtles which sought the island each night at this season of the year.

It was a man-made sound.

The shadows in the fog did not trouble Ruth now. There was something of greater moment out there on the water, she was sure. Ruth crept down to the open shore and listened.

A voice! She almost cried aloud, she was so startled. And for a moment a thrill of delight shocked the girl.

It was a rescue! Somebody had come looking for them! She knew it could not be Mr. Howbridge and the others returning, although she had imagined such a thing as she lay there between waking and sleeping.

Nevertheless, something told Ruth Kenway not to shout. She determined to make no sound until she knew more about these strangers. Or at least, until it seemed that they might be going away from Palm Island without investigating.

She now knew what the sounds were which had first startled her. The anchor of a boat had splashed overboard; then the sail had come rattling down. Although the mist hid the craft, she knew just about where it was lying.

Ruth strained her eyes to see. She strained her ears to hear. Out of the mist she felt that something was coming shoreward. Was it a small boat? Was a landing being made—and so softly for a purpose? Who were these people? Were they friends or enemies?

The echo of the voice reached her ears again—flatly and, it seemed, scarcely human in its timbre. But Ruth was confident that it was a man who spoke and that he spoke roughly.

She could not expect that any rescue party sent out from St. Sergius would be altogether made up of the hotel guests. The boatmen engaged on the waterfront for such a venture were likely to be rather rough men.

When she heard the voice for a third time and recognized the words as Spanish or Afro-Spanish the oldest Corner House girl shrank back toward the edge of the jungle in which the camp lay.

Had she heard English spoken by the party coming ashore she would have raised her voice in a glad shout. Now she hesitated, determining to wait upon the landing before she made her presence known.

“If they are looking for us they may say something or do something to prove it,” she thought. Ruth knew a few Spanish words and she began to recall them to mind and get ready for an interview with the strangers when such a moment should arrive. “I suppose I ought to welcome the coming of anybody at all. But these——”

A moving shape suddenly appeared in the mist. A keel grated on the shore. Several voices, all speaking a mixed Spanish, burst out. Ruth heard Agnes stir again and cry out faintly.

The older girl threw herself into the shelter and placed a hand over Agnes’ mouth.

“Hush!” she commanded.

“Oh! Oh! What is it?” gasped the other.

“Wait. There is no danger—perhaps. But they are strangers.”

“What are you saying?” Agnes Kenway demanded, and sat up promptly, pushing her sister’s restraining hand away.

“I tell you somebody has landed.”

“Not Mr. Howbridge and the boys?”

“Of course not! Would I fear them?”

“Then you are frightened, Ruthie?” said her sister. “Tell me.”

Ruth, however, would say no more. She went back to the clump of brush overlooking the sands. If the visitors should prove to be friends she did not want them to escape before she called to them.

The voices did not sound kind at all. Ruth hesitated. Agnes, creeping out after her, likewise listened to the broken snatches of conversation which reached their ears.

“Pirates!” exploded the younger sister, her lips close to Ruth’s ear.

“Pirates your grandmother!” returned Ruth, exasperated.

“Wish Sammy Pinkney was here,” giggled Agnes, for with all their trouble she could joke. “He ought to be a judge of pirates by this time.”

“You needn’t laugh.”

“Maybe not. But I won’t cry—yet,” said Agnes, more cheerful than she had been for some hours.

The two girls, clinging to each other’s hands in the shivery mist, waited and listened. The men who had landed from the boat evidently drew the craft well up on the beach. Then some of them walked up to the spring.

“Agnes!” ejaculated Ruth, impressively, but in a very low voice.

“Yes?”

“They know this island. They are familiar with it. They dropped their anchor right opposite this place in the dark, and now they are coming to the spring.”

“We-ell,” stammered Agnes, “maybe that is good news.”

“They are not likely, then, to be people sent to hunt for us,” announced Ruth. “We must not speak to them.”

“Why?” ejaculated Agnes. “Because we haven’t been introduced?”

“Don’t be a goose. You sound like Neale O’Neil. We must wait to get a good look at them by daylight before we let them see us.”

“But—but, Ruthie,” whispered Agnes, “maybe we might get them to go after the boys and Tess and Dot.”

“They could not do that until morning. We will wait,” Ruth declared firmly.

Her determination could not be shaken. Agnes at this point might have been braver than her sister, but she could not oppose Ruth in her present mood.

The two girls stole off through the scrub timber to the higher ground. They tried to make no sound that would attract the attention of the men who had landed on the island. And in this they evidently succeeded, for their movements were not observed by the strangers.

CHAPTER XXII—THE ODYSSEY OF TESS AND DOT

The motor-boat drew closer in to the shore of the first island. The tide and current sucked the hull of the helpless craft nearer and nearer. As it chanced, there was a point covered with palm trees around which the Isobel drifted. She was then completely hidden from any part, even the highest part, of Palm Island.

When the sun arose the next morning, as far as the party back at the larger island knew, the motor-boat might have been sunk beneath the surface of the sea.

But that was not what had happened. The boat grounded, swung around with the tide, and when the sun got well above the sea its rays shone straight into the open cabin door and into Dot Kenway’s eyes.

“O-oo! Tess!” she squealed. “I guess we landed and didn’t know it. And the boat is pitching over. O-oo!”

It was a fact that the deck of the Isobel—more properly the floor of her cabin—lay at a steep angle. The boat was quite snugly run upon the sands. The tide had withdrawn and left her there.

The two wondering little girls climbed out of their berths and crept to the door and so out into the cockpit. They looked wonderingly over the rail to the shore.

“Why!” observed Dot in wonder, “isn’t this Plam Island?”

“Oh, dear! I wish you’d say Palm Island—and it’s not Palm Island,” declared Tess.

“Then what’s the use of saying it if it isn’t?” grumbled Dot, who disliked being admonished about her faults of pronunciation. “But it looks like Plam Island, so now!”

“I guess all these islands look alike,” sighed Tess, giving up her admonitory attitude for the moment. “We had better go ashore.”

“What for?”

“Well! Aren’t you hungry?” Tess demanded. “And do you want to stay on this pitched-over boat?”

“I’m hungry all right,” agreed Dot. “But nothing more can happen to the boat now, can there? It’s wrecked, and that is all there is about it. It is a good place to sleep in.”

“Are we going to sleep here again, do you suppose?” Tess cried. “Why, of course Ruthie will send the boys for us! Of course she will!”

“She hasn’t yet,” said Dot pessimistically.

“Not in the night. It’s too dark to see then.”

“And she doesn’t know where we are, does she?” demanded Dot.

“Just the same, they will find us. I’m hungry,” Tess announced again.

“What shall we eat?” asked her sister.

But Tess was not nonplussed by that question. Little as she was, she was observant. Such fruits as had been good to eat on Palm Island she knew must be all right to eat here on this strange island.

Of course they had no fire and nothing to cook upon it if they had. The little girls did not know just how to go about finding turtles’ eggs, although they had seen Neale O’Neil uncover the first nestful of those delicacies. But they found two or three cocoanuts which they broke open with pieces of coral. And it was easy enough to pick a lapful of fruit.

Down they squatted on the sand, each with her dress-skirt heaped with fruit, and proceeded to enjoy a repast. Before they had finished, the active mind of Dot demanded to be informed on another point.

“If Neale and Luke come after us, Tess Kenway, how are they going to know we are on this island?”

“Won’t they see us here?” asked her sister.

“Not if we are behind the bushes. I don’t mean to stay out in the sun all the time. You know it is awfully hot at noon.”

“We-ell,” considered Tess, “I s’pose I’ll have to put up my skirt again. They won’t sail by that.”

“Oh, let’s!” exclaimed Dot. Then she looked up into the palm trees and again began to question.

“You can’t ever climb up one of those trees in the world, Tess Kenway.”

“I—I can try,” stammered her sister.

“You’ll break your neck. You’ll get hurt like Margy and Carrie Pendleton’s father got hurt,” declared Dot. “I wish Sammy Pinkney was here.”

“Well!” gasped Tess. “What for?”

“He could climb it. He’s a good climber. You know how he climbed the cherry tree in Mrs. Adams’ back yard,” said Dot earnestly.

“Yes,” rejoined Tess with scorn. “And how they had to call out the fire department to get him down. I remember.”

“Well,” said Dot grumpily, for she almost always stood up for Sammy, “I guess he would have got down by himself if they had left him alone. But Mrs. Adams got so nervous. Anyhow, Tess Kenway, you can’t climb one of these plam trees.”

“Did I say I could?” replied her sister, rather snappishly if the truth were told.

But Tess was a very persistent person when once she had made up her mind to a thing. She walked along the shore for a long way, staring up into the tops of the palms. The trunks were rough enough, but they offered no means of climbing, even had Tess dared the attempt. There were no branches.

“I never did see such silly trees,” she told herself. “I like the trees at home in Milton lots better. Even in winter there are branches sticking out so that you can climb into them if you need to. If—if a mad dog comes along, or anything like that. I wish we were back in Milton!”

Dot heard none of this, for she had settled herself down comfortably under a bush and proceeded to rearrange the Alice-doll’s clothes. That young person was certainly sadly in need of a fresh outfit, as Dot had herself stated some hours before. But who could keep one’s clothing fresh and tidy when cast away on an uninhabited island?

“It is too bad Sammy isn’t here—too bad for him,” Dot called to the anxious Tess, after a minute or two. “He’d so love to be wrecked, and in danger of drowning, and being eaten up by turkles, and all. He would be so excited.”

“He’d be a nuisance,” commented Tess, puzzling her brain over the matter of the signal of distress and nothing much else.

“Come on, Dot,” she finally said. “Let’s go up to the other end of the island—the end nearest Palm Island where Ruthie and the others are. Maybe we’ll find a tree there.”

“There are plenty of trees here. I don’t see why you can’t keep still, Tess Kenway. The sun’s getting hot.”

“Then we want to go right away before it gets any hotter,” and as Tess started off at once, Dot was forced to get up and follow. She did not wish to be left alone with the Alice-doll, although they had seen nothing on the island as yet to affright them.

There was no hill, or even a small mound, on this little island. Just the level crust of earth over the coral rocks crowded with low vegetation out of which the palms shot in some instances to a considerable height. But near the western end of the island some of these trees had been laid low—possibly in the hurricane which had driven the Isobel and her crew to Palm Island. The condition of the tangled palms was as though they had writhed in agony and been uprooted at last by giant hands.

One tall tree—and Tess spied it long before she got to it—lay for fully forty feet almost along the ground at the edge of the jungle. But its top had been caught by a group of other palms. The trunk of the uprooted tree afforded a slanting walk right into the tops of the other palms!

“I can climb that!” declared Tess, quickly, and began to unfasten her skirt.

The palm trunk was rough and husky. Climbing it on hands and knees was a hard task, but not particularly dangerous. As she kept her eyes fixed ahead of her, Tess did not note particularly the height to which she climbed.

Once in the tops of the several palms she was easily able to fasten her plaid skirt out upon a frond which had a free sweep toward the water. This signal of distress was what the party on Palm Island had seen just before the raft set sail on its voyage of rescue.

Because Tess had climbed along the tree trunk and hung out her banner, she felt more brave. And even Dot looked at her sister in wide-eyed admiration.

“I guess Ruthie would have scolded you, Tess,” she said. “But you can climb almost as good as Sammy.”

“Oh, Sammy!” ejaculated Tess.

Having got into the wood, they went back afterward through the middle of the island. And in this way the two little girls came upon what to them seemed a very strange place indeed. The lianas and other vines made the walking difficult and Tess had just said they would have to go back to the shore when suddenly the two little girls stepped right out into an opening where there was a still blue lake as quiet and safe looking as a millpond.