When Ruth shouted to Agnes from the kitchen, where she was frying crabs, to call the children, Agnes dropped the book she had been reading and remembered for the first time that she had neglected to tie the boat.
“Oh, Ruth!” she shrieked. “See what I’ve done!”
Ruth came to the opening in the front of the tent, flushed and disheveled, demanding:
“Well, what? This old fat snaps so!”
“The boat!” cried Agnes.
Ruth stared up and down the shore. There were other boats drawn up on the sand and a few moored beyond low-water mark; but their boat was not in sight.
“Have you let it get away, Agnes Kenway?” Ruth demanded.
“Well! you don’t suppose I went down there and pushed it off, do you?”
“This is no laughing matter——”
“I guess I—I’m not laughing,” gulped Agnes. “It—it’s go-o-one! See! the tide is flowing in and I forgot to tie it.”
She was a little mixed here; it was the boat she had forgotten to tie.
“So,” murmured Ruth; “if the boat had been tied, the tide wouldn’t have carried it away,” and she had no intention of punning, either! “Now what shall we do? That boat cost seventy-five dollars, the man said.”
“Oh, Ruthie!”
“What will Mr. Howbridge say?”
“Oh, Ruthie!”
“No use crying about it,” said the oldest Corner House girl, with decision. “That won’t help.”
“But—but it’s gone out to sea.”
“Nonsense! The tide has taken it up the river. It’s gone round the bend. I hope it won’t be smashed on the rocks, that’s all. We must go after it.”
“How?” asked the tearful Agnes.
“Get another boat, of course. But let’s eat. The children will be hungry, and—— My goodness! the crabs are burning up!” and she ran back into the tent. “Get Tess and Dot, and tell them to hurry!” she called from inside.
But Tess and Dot were not to be found. The beach just then was practically deserted. It was the dinner hour and the various campers all had the sort of appetites that demands meals served promptly on time.
Agnes ran to the other tents in Camp Willowbend; but her small sisters were not with any of the neighbors. It was strange. They had been forbidden to go out of sight of their own tent when neither Ruth nor Agnes was with them; and Tess and Dot were remarkably obedient children.
“I certainly do not understand it,” Ruth said, when Agnes brought back the news.
At that moment a shuffling step sounded outside the tent and a husky voice demanded:
“Any clams terday, lady? Fresh clams—jest dug. Ten cents a dozen; two-bits for fifty; half a dollar a hundred. Fresh clams!”
“Oh!” cried Agnes, springing to the tent entrance so suddenly that the wooden-legged clam-man started back in surprise. “Oh! have you seen my sisters anywhere on the beach?”
“Hel-lo!” growled the startled man. “I dunno ’bout thet thar, shipmet. What kind o’ sisters be they?”
“Two little girls,” said Ruth, eagerly, joining Agnes at the opening. “One of them carried a doll in her arms. She is dark. The bigger one is fair.”
The saltish old fellow chuckled deep in his hairy throat. “Guess I seen ’em, shipmets,” he said. “Them’s the leetle gals that didn’t know clam-holes.”
“Well! what became of them?” demanded the impatient Agnes.
“Why——I dug ’em, shipmet, an’ they air in this i-den-ti-cal basket now,” declared the clam-digger.
“Well!” gasped Agnes, behind her hand. “Maybe the children didn’t know clam-holes; but he doesn’t know beans!”
Ruth asked again: “We mean, what became of the girls, sir?”
“I couldn’t tell ye, shipmet. D’ye want any clams?” pursued this man of one idea. “Ten cents a dozen; two-bits for——”
“I’ll buy some clams—yes,” cried Ruth, in some desperation. “But tell us where you last saw our sisters, sir?”
“How many you want, shipmet?” demanded the quite unmoved old fellow.
“Two!” cried Agnes. “There were only two of them. Two little girls——Oh!”
Ruth had pinched her, and now said, calmly: “Please count out a hundred for us, sir. Here is fifty cents. And please tell us where you saw our little sisters?”
“I seed two small gals, shipmet, down on the flats yonder,” said the clam digger, setting down his basket and squatting with the wooden leg stretched out before him. He began to busily count the clams onto the little platform before the tent.
“Where did they go, sir?” asked Ruth.
“I didn’t take no pertic’lar notice of ’em, shipmet. They had a dratted dog with them——”
“Oh! Tom Jonah is with them. Then they can’t be lost,” gasped Agnes.
“Las’ time I ’member of cockin’ me eye at ’em,” declared the old clam digger, “they was inter a boat right down here below this tent. The dog was with ’em.”
He counted out the last clam, took his fifty cents, and departed. The two older Corner House girls looked at each other. Agnes was very white.
“Do—do you suppose they drifted away in the boat?” she whispered.
“I expect so,” agreed Ruth. “Come on, Ag. We’ll go up beyond the bend and see if we can sight the boat.”
“Oh! if they fall overboard——”
“Tom Jonah would bring them both ashore if they did, I believe,” said Ruth, though her voice shook a little. “Do you want something to eat before you go?”
Agnes looked at her scornfully. “I don’t ever want to eat again if Dot and Tess aren’t found,” she sobbed. “Come on!”
“We’ll take something along to eat, if you don’t want to eat here,” Ruth said, sensibly. “The children will be hungry enough when we find them, you may be sure.”
“If we find them,” suggested the desperate Agnes.
“Don’t talk like a goose, Ag!” exclaimed the older sister. “Of course we’ll find them. They’ve only drifted away.”
“But you said yourself the boat might be smashed against the rocks.”
“Tom Jonah’s with them,” said Ruth, confidently. “He could live in the water altogether, you know. Don’t be worried about the children being drowned—— Oh, Agnes!”
The change in her sister’s voice startled Agnes, who had gone into the back part of the tent. She ran out to where Ruth was wrapping the fried soft-shell crabs in a sheet of brown paper.
Ruth was staring through the open flap of the tent. Outside, about where the clam digger had stood a few moments before, was the tall, scarred-faced Gypsy tramp that they had seen at the nomads’ camp the day they came to Pleasant Cove!
“Oh, Ruth!” echoed Agnes, coming to Ruth’s side.
But the older sister quickly recovered her self-possession. Her first thought was:
“If Tom Jonah were only here!”
Ruth went to the door. The man leered at her and doffed his old cap.
“Good day, little lady,” he said. “She remember me—Big Jim—heh?”
“I remember you,” Ruth said, shortly.
“Ver’ proud,” declared the Gypsy, bowing again.
“What do you want?” asked the oldest Corner House girl, with much more apparent courage than she really felt.
“You remember Zaliska—heh?” asked the man, shrewdly.
“I remember her,” said Ruth.
“Little lady seen Zaliska since that day—heh?”
“What do you want to know for?” demanded Ruth, puzzled, yet standing her ground. She remembered in a flash all her suspicions regarding the young girl who masqueraded as the Gypsy Queen.
“Zaliska come here, heh?” said the man, doggedly, and with something besides curiosity in his narrow eyes.
“I don’t know why I should tell you if she had been here,” declared Ruth, while Agnes clung to her arm in fear.
“The little lady would fool Big Jim. No! We want find Zaliska.”
“Don’t come here for her,” said Ruth, sharply. “She’s not here.”
“But she been here—heh?” repeated the fellow. “She come here like she was dressed at the camp—heh? Then she go away different—heh?”
Ruth knew well enough what he meant. He hinted that the masquerading girl had come here to see Ruth, and discarded her queen’s garments and slipped away in her own more youthful character.
“I’m not sure that I know what you mean,” she said to the evil-faced man. “But one thing I can tell you—and you can believe it. I have not seen Zaliska since that day we girls came by your camp.”
“Ha! she come here to see you——”
“No. She went to the hotel and to a friend’s house in the village,” said Ruth, “asking for me. I did not see her. She has not come here.”
“Huh!” grunted the man, and backed away, doubtfully.
“Now we are busy and you must not trouble us any more,” declared Ruth, hurriedly. “Come, Agnes!”
“He’ll come in the tent and search it,” whispered Agnes, in her sister’s ear.
“I will speak to Mr. Stryver. He is here to-day,” said Ruth, mentioning a neighbor in the camp.
“Big Jim,” as the Gypsy called himself, had backed away from the tent, but he watched the departing girls with lowering gaze. At Mr. Stryver’s tent Ruth halted long enough to tell the gentleman to keep his eye on the Gypsy man who was hanging about the camp.
“The women were here to sell baskets and such like truck while you girls were off crabbing, this morning,” said Mrs. Stryver. “It gives me the shivers to have those folks around. I think we ought to have these tent camps policed.”
“I’ll ’tend to this fellow,” promised Mr. Stryver, who was a burly man, and not afraid of anything.
Ruth hurried Agnes away toward the bend without another word.
“Why didn’t you tell them Tess and Dot were lost?” asked Agnes, gulping down a sob.
“I don’t want anybody to know it, if we can help,” returned Ruth. “It just looks as though we didn’t take sufficient care of them.”
“It—it was all my fault,” choked Agnes. “If I had tied the boat as you told me——”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” said Ruth, quickly. “Or, if it is anybody’s fault! We don’t want folks to say that the Corner House girls from Milton don’t know enough to take care of each other while they are under canvas.”
“My!” Tess gasped, sitting in the stern of the drifting boat, “how fast the shores go past, Dot! We’re going up the river awfully quick.”
“And so j-j-jerky!” exclaimed her sister, clinging to the Alice-doll.
“You aren’t really afraid, are you, Dot?”
“No-o. Only for Alice. She’s always been weakly, you know, since that awful time she got buried alive,” said Dot, seriously. “And if she should get wet and catch her death of cold——”
“But you mustn’t drop her overboard,” warned Tess.
“Do you s’pose I would, Tess Kenway?” demanded Dot, quite hurt by the suggestion.
“If she did fall overboard, Tom Jonah would save her, of course,” went on Tess.
“Oh! don’t you say such things,” cried Dot. “And do, please, stop the boat from jerking so!”
“I—I guess it wants to be steered,” Tess said.
The tiller ropes were at hand and Tess had observed Ruth and Agnes use them. She began experimenting with them and soon got the hang of using the rudder. But as the boat was propelled, only by the tide, it would “wabble.”
Tom Jonah watched all the small girls did with his keen eyes. But he scarcely moved. The boat floated on and on. Tess did not know how to work the boat ashore—indeed, caught as the craft was in the strong tide-rip, it would have taken considerable exertion with the oars to have driven it to land.
There chanced to be no other boats beyond the bend on this day. On either hand there were farms, but the houses were too far from the shores for the dwellers therein to notice the plight of the two small girls and the big dog in the bobbing cedar boat.
The shores at the river’s edge were wooded for the most part, as was the long and narrow island in the middle of the river, not far ahead. This latter was called Wild Goose Island, as Tess and Dot knew.
“Maybe the boat will go ashore there,” said Dot, more cheerfully.
“There are berries on that island,” cried Tess. “Only they were not ripe when we were there last week.” She was beginning to feel hungry; it was past midday.
“But we can’t walk back to the tent from there,” objected Dot.
“No-o,” admitted Tess. “It’ll be land, just the same!”
But the tide swept the cedar boat out from the lower end of the island and up the northern channel. It was this fact that hid the drifting boat from the anxious eyes of Ruth and Agnes when they came around the bend, expecting to see the missing craft. The island hid it.
Wild Goose Island was more than half a mile long. In the channel where the boat floated, the current of the river and the inflowing tide began to battle.
There were eddies that seized the boat and swept it in circles. The surface of the channel was rippled by small waves. The boat bobbed every-which-way, for Tess could not control the rudder.
“Oh, dear me!” gasped Dot. “I—I am afraid my Alice-doll will be sick. Do—don’t you s’pose we can get ashore, Tess?”
But Tess did not see how they could do that, although the boat was now and then swept very close to the shore of the island.
The island was a famous picnicking place; but there were no pleasure seekers there to-day. The shore seemed deserted as the girls were swept on by the resistless tide.
Suddenly Dot stood right up and squealed—pointing at the island. Tom Jonah lifted his head and barked.
“There’s somebody, Tess!” declared Dot.
The bigger Corner House girl had seen the face break through the fringe of bushes on the island shore. It was a dark, beautiful face, and it was a girl’s.
“Oh! oh! Let’s call her,” gasped Tess. “She’ll help us.”
The two small Kenways had a strong belief in the goodness of humanity at large. They expected that anybody who saw their plight would come to their rescue if possible.
For fully a minute, however, the girl in the bushes of Wild Goose Island did not come out into the open. Tess and Dot shouted again and again, while Tom Jonah lifted up his head and bayed most mournfully.
If the girl on the island did not want general attention attracted to the place, it behooved her to come out of concealment and try to pacify the drifting trio in the cedar boat.
Her face was very red when she reappeared in an open place on the shore. The distance between her and the boat, which was now caught in a small eddy, was only a few yards.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, in rather a sharp tone.
“We—we can’t stop the boat,” responded Tess.
“We want to get ashore,” added Dorothy,
“How did you get out there?” asked the strange girl. She was older than Ruth, and although she was very pretty, Tess and Dot were quite sure they did not like her—much!
“We got in it, and it floated away with us,” said Tess.
“Where from?” asked the girl on shore.
“Oh! ’way down the river. ’Round that turn. We live at Willowbend Camp with Ruth and Aggie.”
“Ruth Who?” the other demanded, sharply.
“Our sister, Ruth Kenway,” said Tess.
The girl on the island was silent for a moment, while the boat turned lazily in the eddy. It now was headed up stream again, when she said:
“Is that dog good for anything?”
“Tom Jonah?” cried Tess and Dot together. “Why, he’s the best dog that ever was,” Dot added.
“Does he know anything?” insisted the strange girl.
“Uncle Rufus says he’s just as knowin’ as any human,” Tess said, impressively.
“Does he mind?” pursued the girl on the shore.
“Oh, yes,” said Tess. “He’ll sit up and beg—and shakes hands—and lies down and rolls over—and——”
“Say! those tricks won’t help you any,” cried the other. “Can you make him swim ashore here?”
“Why—ee—I don’t know,” stammered Tess.
“We wouldn’t want to let you have Tom Jonah,” Dorothy hastened to explain.
“Goodness knows, I don’t want him,” said the big girl, still tartly. “But if he can swim ashore with the end of that rope you have coiled there in the bow of your boat, tied to his collar, he may be of some use.”
“Oh, yes!” cried Tess, scrambling toward the bow at once.
“See that the other end is fast to your boat,” commanded the girl on the island.
It was. Tess quickly knotted the free end of the long painter to Tom Jonah’s collar.
“Now send him ashore, child!” cried the big girl.
Tom Jonah was looking up at Tess with his wonderfully intelligent eyes. He seemed to understand just what was expected of him when the rope was tied to his collar.
“Go on, Tom Jonah! Overboard!” cried Tess, firmly.
“He—he’ll get all wet, Tess,” objected Dot, plaintively.
“That won’t hurt him, Dot,” explained her sister. “You know he loves the water.”
“Come on, here!” cried the girl on the island, snapping her fingers. “Push him overboard.”
But Tom Jonah did not need such urging. With his forepaws on the gunwale of the boat he barked several times. The boat tipped a little and Dot screamed, clutching the Alice-doll tighter to her bosom.
“Go on, Tom Jonah!” shouted Tess. “You’re rocking the boat!”
The big dog leaped over the gunwale into the river, leaving the light craft tossing in a most exciting fashion. Some water even slopped over the side.
“Come on, sir! come on!” shouted the girl ashore.
Tom Jonah swam directly for the beach where she stood. The line uncoiled freely behind him, slipping into the water. It was long enough to reach the shore where the big girl stood; but none too long.
The sag of the rope in the water began to trouble Tom Jonah, strong as he was. Quickly the girl drew off her shoes and stockings and waded in to meet the laboring dog.
“Come on, sir! now we’ll get them!” she urged, laying hold of the line.
The dog scrambled ashore, barking loudly. The line was taut and the boat had swung around, tugging on the other end like a thing of life.
“Now we have them!” cried the girl.
She pulled hard on the rope. Tom Jonah, seeing what she was doing, caught the rope in his strong jaws, and set back to pull, too. Tess and Dot screamed with delight.
As the big girl slowly drew in the rope the dog backed up the beach, and so the cedar boat, with its two remaining passengers, came to land.
“Oh, dear me! Oh, dear me!” gasped Dot, standing in the bow of the boat. “I’m so glad to get ashore. And so’s my Alice-doll,” she added, seriously.
Tess helped her sister to jump down upon the sand and then followed, herself. Tom Jonah dropped the rope and bounded about them, barking his satisfaction. But the strange girl was looking up and down the river, and over at the opposite shore, with a mind plainly disturbed.
“Come on, now!” she said, sharply. “Unfasten the rope from that dog’s collar. We’ll keep that. It may come in handy.”
“Don’t you want it to pull the boat up on the beach?” asked Tess, as she obeyed the command.
The strange girl was already unfastening the rope from the ring in the bow of the boat. She threw the line ashore and then pushed the boat off with such vigor that she ran knee deep into the river again.
“Oh! oh!” squealed Dot. “You’ll lose our boat.”
“I want to lose it,” declared the girl, coming back very red in the face from her exertions. “I got you kids ashore, ’cause you might have been tipped over, or hurt in some way. I’m not going to be bothered by that boat.”
“But that’s Ruthie’s boat,” exclaimed Tess.
“I can’t help it! You young ones go into the bushes there and sit down. Keep quiet, too. Take the dog with you and keep him quiet. Don’t let him run about, or bark. If he does I’ll tie him to a tree and muzzle him.”
“Why—why, I don’t think that’s very nice of you,” said Tess, who was too polite, and had too deep a sense of gratitude, to say just what she really thought of this conduct on the part of the strange girl. “We might have saved the boat for Ruth.”
“And it would give me dead away,” declared the big girl, angrily. “You children be satisfied that I took you ashore. Now keep still!”
“I—I don’t believe I like her very much, Tess,” Dot whispered again.
The older Corner House girl was not only puzzled by the strange girl’s actions and words, but she was somewhat frightened. She and Dot sat down among the bushes, where they were completely hidden from the river and the opposite shore, and called Tom Jonah to them.
He lay at their feet. He had shaken himself comparatively dry, and now he put his head on his paws and went to sleep.
“Well,” sighed Tess, caressing the dog’s head. “I’m glad we have him with us.”
Ruth and Agnes went around the wooded point, called “Willowbend,” and looked up the river. As we already know, the drifting boat, with Tess and Dot and Tom Jonah in it, had gone out of sight on the other side of Wild Goose Island.
“It never came this way, Ruth!” groaned the frightened Agnes. “They’ve drifted out to sea, just as I said.”
“Nothing of the kind,” Ruth declared, bound to keep up her sister’s courage, and knowing well that her conscience was punishing her cruelly. “The tide is coming in. They were bound to float up the river. But maybe the boat’s gone ashore somewhere.”
“Or it’s sunk,” said the lugubrious Agnes.
“Now you stop that, Aggie Kenway!” cried Ruth, stamping her foot. “I won’t have it. With Tom Jonah those children would not easily get into trouble.”
“They could fall out of the boat,” urged Agnes, wiping her eyes.
“They’d not be foolish enough to rock the boat. It’s all right, I tell you. I did expect to see the boat from this spot; but it’s floated into some cove somewhere. The children are safe enough——”
“You don’t know!” blubbered Agnes.
“Keep still! Yes, I do know—I know as well as I want to. But we’ll have to ask for help to find them.”
“What kind of help?” asked Agnes.
“We’ll get Mr. Stryver’s motorboat,” said the oldest Corner House girl, with decision.
As they went back around the bend they heard a chorus of shouts from the camp. Agnes was startled, being in a nervous state, anyway.
“What is that, Ruth? The Gypsies?” she demanded.
“If it is, then the Gypsies have adopted the Milton high school yell. Don’t you recognize it?” returned Ruth. “The boys have arrived.”
“Neale O’Neil!”
“I suppose Neale is with them.”
“He will help us,” cried the delighted Agnes, sure in the ability of Neale O’Neil to do almost anything.
“Well—I suppose he may,” admitted Ruth, slowly.
Ruth had made no mistake in identifying the school yell of their boy friends. There was a crowd of boys at the two big tents reserved for Joe Eldred and his friends. They had just come on the auto-stage.
Already an American flag and the school pennant were being raised on the flag-pole before the tents. The scene at Willowbend Camp had been a most quiet one ten minutes before; now it seemed to be alive in every part, and the boys from Milton were all over it.
They were like a herd of young colts let loose in a new pasture. They got the flags up before the girls came back, and then began running races, and playing leap-frog on the sand. The midday heat made no difference to them.
“Doesn’t that water look inviting?” shouted Ben Truman to Joe and some of the bigger boys. “When do we go in swimming, Joe?”
“You can go when you like, Bennie,” returned Eldred.
“I’d like right now,” declared the youngster.
“Clothes and all, I suppose, Ben?” drawled Neale O’Neil.
“What’s clothes? I’m not afraid to go in just as I am.”
“I dare you, Ben!” shouted another of the boys, knowing the spirit of Truman.
“Done!” exclaimed Ben, and sprang away toward the in-coming tide. He splashed half-knee deep into the river before the others could call him back. He probably had no intention of going any deeper; but inadvertently he stepped into one of the holes the wooden-legged man had recently made when he dug for clams there, and over Ben pitched upon his nose!
There was a great shout of laughter. Ben was submerged—every bit! He came up blowing like a porpoise.
“Come on in, fellows! the water’s fine!” he gasped, not embarrassed by the accident.
“Thank you. We’ll wait till the bathing suits arrive,” returned Neale. “Hello! Here are the Corner House girls—two of them, at least.”
He hurried forward to greet Ruth and Agnes. The other boys simmered down a little when they observed the girls; most of them doffed their caps politely, but only Joe and Neale knew Ruth and Agnes very well.
“Oh, Neale!” was the latter’s greeting to her boy friend. “Don’t tell the other fellows, but Tess and Dot are lost.”
“Great goodness, Ag! You don’t mean it?” cried Neale, keenly troubled by her statement.
“It’s not as bad as that,” Ruth interposed. “They are out in our boat with Tom Jonah.”
“I knew you had him down here. He’ll take care of them,” said Neale, with confidence.
“Yes, I know,” agreed Ruth. “But they all got in the boat unbeknown to Aggie and me, and the tide’s carried them up the river.”
“You don’t know!” burst out Agnes.
“Well, they couldn’t have drifted out into the cove, that’s sure!” returned the older Corner House girl. “I’m going to get Mr. Stryver’s motorboat. Will you take us out in it and look for the children, Neale? You can run a motorboat, can’t you?”
“Sure! And I’ll do anything I can to help find the children,” declared Neale O’Neil. “Now, don’t you girls turn on the sprinklers——”
“Who’s crying?” gulped Agnes, angrily.
“You are—pretty nearly. And your eyes are all red.”
“Hay fever,” sniffed Agnes, trying to joke.
“I’m going to get the boat right away. Come on, Neale,” cried Ruth, and she started for the Stryver tent. “I’m worried about those children,” she added, over her shoulder. “There are Gypsies about.”
She hurried on and Neale took Agnes by the elbow and led her out of all possible earshot of the other boys.
“Buck up, Aggie,” he said, gruffly, as a boy will. “You’ve been a good little sport—always. Don’t blubber about it.”
“But it was I who forgot to tie the boat,” Agnes said.
“Tell me about it,” urged Neale. So Agnes gave him the particulars. “Funny how the boat should have drifted out of sight so quickly,” was the boy’s comment.
“Isn’t it? But it’s go-o-one——”
“There, there! We’ll find it and the children will be all right,” he assured her.
Ruth came running with the key to the padlock that moored the Nimble Shanks to the mooring stake. They got out to her—just the two girls and Neale—in a dory.
The Nimble Shanks was a blue boat with a high prow and long, sweeping lines to the low stern. It was not a large boat, but was built for speed. The engine and steering-gear were amidships and were arranged so that one man could handle the craft.
Neale was naturally of a mechanical turn, as well as an athlete. He had built a kerosene engine during the winter, with some assistance from Mr. Con Murphy, the shoemaker with whom he lived in Milton. Moreover, he had driven a boat just like this one of Mr. Stryver’s on the Milton river.
While Ruth was unlocking the chain of the Nimble Shanks, and fastening the dory in its place, Neale whirled the fly-wheel and caught the ignition spark; immediately the exhaust began to pop and Neale shouted:
“All free, there, Ruth?”
“Let her go, Neale!” returned Agnes, eagerly. “I can’t wait, it seems to me.”
“Sit tight, then, ladies,” said Neale, as Ruth scrambled aft. “I believe this craft can be made to travel.”
The girls obeyed as the Nimble Shanks started. She shot right out into the middle of the river, and the wave thrown up by her wedge-like bow rose higher and higher on either hand. Actually, when the motorboat had been running for five minutes, the girls in the sternsheets seemed sitting at a much lower level than the surface of the river.
“Goodness! if this boat stopped suddenly we’d be drowned by that wave,” gasped Ruth.
Neale headed up the river in a grand curve. They could see the shores on either hand. The boys ashore cheered their departure, though they did not know their errand.
They shot by the wooded bend like an express train. The girls kept watch on either hand for the boat. They hoped to see her rocking in some cove along one shore or the other.
But it was Neale himself who first sighted the drifting craft. The motorboat took the south channel in passing Wild Goose Island. Neale suddenly brought the speed of the craft down to one-half.
“There’s a boat ahead,” he said to the girls. “It appears to be empty. Stand up and see if it’s the one.”
Ruth rose and clung to Agnes’ shoulder to steady herself. She saw the empty cedar boat, bobbing on the little waves beyond the far point of Wild Goose Island.
“It’s her!” she said, breathlessly. “But where are the children?”
“We’ll find out,” said Neale, quickly. “Sit down again.”
“And Tom Jonah?” urged Ruth.
“Make up your mind that wherever the children are, he is, too,” said Neale, and he let the Nimble Shanks out again, and Ruth tumbled promptly into her seat.
The motorboat fairly leaped ahead. In five minutes they were near the empty boat, and Neale shut off the engine entirely. Under the momentum she had gained she slid right up beside the tossing cedar boat.
“Oh, oh!” groaned Agnes. “Where have they gone?”
“Not overboard, that’s sure,” said Neale, cheerfully. “They would have overturned the boat.”
“I—don’t—know,” began Ruth.
“Oh, Ruth!” shrieked Agnes. “Maybe they were not in her after all.”
“But that clam man said he saw them.”
“He didn’t see them in the boat when it was afloat,” said Agnes, clinging to the safer possibility.
“I know. But where else did they go?”
“Down the beach, maybe,” said Neale, slowly.
“The Gypsies have gotten them!” exclaimed Agnes, in despair.
“Stop it, Ag!” cried Ruth, shaking her sister. “You can think up the most perfectly awful things——”
“Bet they got out of the boat on the shore somewhere, and let it drift away again,” suggested Neale, rather feebly.
“It wouldn’t be like Tess to do such a foolish thing,” said Ruth, shaking her head.
“They didn’t have anything to tie the boat up with. There’s no painter in her,” said the observant Neale.
“Of course there’s a painter!” cried Agnes, jumping up. “A nice long one——”
“Where is it?” demanded the boy.
“Oh, Ruth! That’s gone!” gasped Agnes.
“Say!” said Neale, very seriously; “ropes don’t come untied of themselves. Sure it was fastened to the boat?”
“To that ring,” Ruth declared, confidently.
“And little Tess, or Dot, wouldn’t think to untie it themselves—I’m sure,” the boy observed. “They are with somebody who has taken them out of the boat—be sure of that.”
“You only—only say so to comfort us,” sobbed Agnes.
“Oh, Ag! stop being a ‘leaky vessel’!” cried Neale, with a boy’s exasperation at a girl’s tears. “Crying won’t help you any.”
Ruth had been examining the cedar boat, carefully. There was a little water in the bottom of it. She knew it did not leak. And floating on the water was a tiny russet leather slipper.
“That belongs to Dot’s Alice-doll!” she cried, leaning over the gunwale and fishing for the slipper. “They were in the boat.”
“We knew that before. The clam man said so,” sniffed Agnes.
“But they got out in a hurry. Otherwise Dot would have noticed that the doll had lost her slipper.”
“That seems reasonable,” admitted Neale O’Neil. “But what’s become of them? Where did they go? Where are they now?”
He was staring all about the river, while the two boats gently rubbed together, bobbing and courtesying on the tide.
“Don’t see anybody on the shores—and not another boat in sight,” the boy added.
“Maybe they went ashore on the island?” suggested Agnes, looking back.
“There’s nobody there,” said her sister, looking back, too. “Not a soul.”
“Guess you’re right. If there were anybody besides the girls there they’d have some kind of a boat, and we’d see it.”
“That’s so, Neale,” Ruth said. “And surely any grown person who rescued the girls wouldn’t have let the boat drift away again.”
The trio of searchers gazed at each other in trouble and amazement. They could not explain this mystery in any satisfactory way.
Tess and Dot, sitting in the middle of a brush clump on Wild Goose Island, never saw the blue motorboat with their sisters and Neale O’Neil in it, fly past.
But the dark-faced girl, dressed in her bedraggled Gypsy finery, saw the Nimble Shanks, for she was on the watch at one side or the other of the island, all the time.
She observed the motorboat overtake the drifting craft, and saw Neale carry a line aboard the latter and then start up the engine of the power boat again. The two boats went up the lake at a fair pace; but the searching party could not travel so fast now, for fear of swamping the towed boat.
“I don’t think this is much fun,” said Dot, plaintively, when the big girl came back to them. “It’s hot here—and I’m hungry—and my Alice-doll has lost one of her shoes.”
“We’ll go up into the woods and pick some berries,” said the strange girl, not unkindly. “I know where there are some strawberries—and they’re just as sweet.”
“Oh! that will be fine. I do love strawberries,” declared Dot, easily appeased.
Tess was more troubled than her sister by this strange situation. She felt, somehow, as though the big girl were holding them prisoners. Yet she could not understand why.
She got up from the ground and at once Tom Jonah started up, barking and bounding about.
“Stop that dog!” exclaimed the big girl, crossly. “Make him walk beside you. I’ll tie him up,” she threatened.
“Then he’ll howl awful,” cried Dot. “We tried that once at home. Don’t you ’member, Tess?”
“Well, you keep him still,” snapped the big girl.
At a word from Tess the old dog drooped his tail and fell in behind them, in a most subdued manner. They went up through the thick woods to the higher part of the island. At no point could the little procession have been seen from the water.
There was a hillock up there, bare of trees, the southern side of which was sown thickly with strawberries. The bed was rich in berries, and how sweet and delicate was their flavor!
“Oh, so much nicer than boughten berries!” Tess declared, forgetting for the time all her anxiety.
Indeed, both of the Corner House girls were so busy satisfying their appetites with strawberries that they forgot about the unpleasant side to their adventure. Nor did they see the girl who had helped them ashore from the boat, creep over the knoll to watch the motorboat and its tow going down the river again, by way of the northern channel.
It was fully half past one. While Tess and Dot feasted in the wild strawberry patch, their sisters and Neale O’Neil munched cold, fried crabs on the Nimble Shanks.
It took a lot of berries to satisfy the healthy appetites of two girls like Tess and Dot whose dinner had been indefinitely postponed. Dot finally rolled right over in the shade, fast asleep, her dress and fingers berry-stained and the last plump one she had picked between her rosy lips!
The big girl came back and Tess whispered: “We’d best not wake her, for she usually takes a nap afternoons. When she wakes up, I guess we’d best be going. Ruth and Agnes will be awfully scared for us. And we’ve lost Ruth’s boat, too,” she added, disconsolately.
“How do you expect to get off this island?” demanded the strange girl.
“Why! how did you get on?” returned Tess.
“I paddled myself over on a raft of logs, early this morning before anybody else was up,” said the girl, after a minute. “I wasn’t going back till night. But if I keep you children all day there’ll be a big row, I s’pose,” she added, sullenly.
“I expect there will,” was Tess’ calm response.
“They’d get me for kidnapping, like enough,” said the girl, as though talking to herself. “Wish I hadn’t taken you out of that boat. But you and the dog were raising an awful noise.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tess, politely, “if we have been a nuisance. But of course we’ve got to get back to the tent before dark.”
“I s’pose so,” admitted the older girl.
“It’s funny Ruth hasn’t been up here before now looking for us,” Tess observed.
The big girl turned her head so Tess should not see her face. “Suppose she did not know you went sailing in the boat?” she said.
“Why! perhaps that is the reason,” Tess agreed. “They couldn’t have seen us; for if they had, Ruth would have been after the boat in a hurry.”
“Well,” said the strange girl, “I’ll have to get you across to the river bank. I wasn’t going till night. But——”
“We are very much obliged to you,” Tess hastened to say. “But we couldn’t stay that long.”
“Oh, well! I’ll leave you children at a farmer’s over there. They’ll have a telephone and they’ll get word to your sisters. You’ll get back by suppertime.”
“Thank you,” Tess said, simply.
But she was more than a little disturbed in her mind. A raft of logs did not encourage her to look forward to the trip to the mainland with much pleasure.
Besides, the mystery regarding this pretty girl made Tess feel uncomfortable. Tess Kenway was quite old enough to know the difference between right and wrong; and there was something about the strange girl that was decidedly wrong!
Why had she come out here to Wild Goose Island in the early morning—before anybody in the neighborhood was up? Was she a runaway? Had she done something really naughty? and was she afraid to have her folks find her?
It was all a great puzzle and Tess sighed and shook her head. Finally she asked: “If you please, where is the raft of logs?”
“Right down there,” said the girl, pointing to the southern side of the island. “You can’t see it. I dragged it into shallow water and covered it up with branches and brush.”
“Is—is it safe?” queried Tess.
“Well, it didn’t drown me coming over,” said the girl, with a short, hard laugh. “But the logs came near parting.”
“Oh!”
“I’ll fix ’em before we start back. That painter off your boat will help. We will be all right,” said the big girl, carelessly.
Dot awoke after a little, and so did Tom Jonah. The whole party went down to the brush-fringed shore. Tess saw that the girl had hidden her raft very ingeniously. And it was evident, too, that she hated to leave the island so long before evening.
“Got myself in a nice mess!” the Corner House girl heard her mutter, as she went about binding the three logs together more tightly with the strong rope from the cedar boat.
She worked hard for half an hour, standing almost waist deep in the water as she made the logs secure. It was not a heavy raft—nor was it very safe looking, to Tess’ mind.
But fortunately Dot thought it would be great fun to ride on such a craft, and Tess was too brave to say anything that would really frighten Dorothy.
Tom Jonah became restless and wanted to wander about; but the big girl was very sharp with him. “If he were my dog I’d make him mind better!” she threatened. “If anything gives us away, it will be that dog.”
Tess did not understand this; and like Dot she felt hurt when anybody criticised Tom Jonah. “Love me, love my dog” was the motto of the younger Kenway sisters.
Finally the big girl pronounced the raft strong enough, and she waded out of the water and put on her skirts again. “Now, get aboard there,” she commanded. “If we’ve got to go, we might as well start. The tide will be less strong now.”
Dot skipped aboard the raft with her Alice-doll, in great glee; Tess followed more slowly. But when Tom Jonah tried to come, too, the big girl, with the broken oar she used for a paddle, drove him back.
“It won’t hold him up, too!” she cried. “Get out!”
“Oh! don’t hurt Tom Jonah!” wailed Dot, shrilly. “Don’t!”
“You look out!” warned Tess. “He’ll grab you!”
Tom Jonah certainly did grab the paddle. And he nearly wrenched it from the hands of the big girl, strong as she was.
“He’ll tip us all over!” declared the girl, angrily, flushed and breathing heavily. “Don’t you see how deep in the water we are? Any little wave will come right over the logs and wet us.”
“Well!” cried Tess. “We’re barefooted. And we can’t leave Tom Jonah behind.”
“He can swim, can’t he? Silly!” exclaimed the big girl. She pushed off the raft suddenly, leaving the troubled dog on the bank. The current caught the raft instantly and headed it down stream. The big girl hurried to dip her paddle in the water on the lower side and swerve the head of the raft around.
“Oh, Tom Jonah! Come! Come!” cried Dot, fearful that the dog would be lost.
He plunged right in and swam to the rear of the raft. He did not try to climb aboard, but he rested his nose on the logs and paddled quietly behind. The big girl paid him no further attention. She had her hands full as it was, keeping the raft from being swept down stream.
The current of the river had now conquered the inflowing tide. The force of the latter was spent; but the channel on this side of the island was not rough. The little waves did not break over their feet as yet.
The passage of the river was not, however, so hard. The handsome dark girl was strong, and she plied the broken oar with vigor. In half an hour they drew near to the tree-fringed southern bank.
The girls saw nobody along the shore, nor had any boat put out to meet them. It was a day when all the farmers seemed to be busy in their fields, and this was a wild spot toward which the raft had been aimed.
At last the end of the logs touched a shelving, narrow beach. The big girl leaped off and commanded Tess and Dot to follow immediately. Already Tom Jonah had scrambled ashore and was shaking himself, as a dog will.
Suddenly the big dog uttered a throaty growl. None of the three girls paid any attention. The strange girl was busy helping Tess and Dot to land.
Again Tom Jonah uttered his warning, and then barked sharply.
“Shut up!” commanded the big girl, turning on him fiercely.
At that moment a man walked out of the wood. He was a fierce little fellow with a black mustache and a dirty red tie. His velveteen suit was worn and greasy and his hat broken.
The strange girl turned suddenly and saw him. She uttered a stifled scream and the fellow folded his arms and said something to her sternly in a language that afterwards Tess said “sounded like powder-crackers exploding!”
The girl was terrified in the extreme. She looked from side to side as though contemplating escape. The fellow took another stride toward her.
And then Tom Jonah intervened. The big dog sprang with an awful growl, hurling himself straight at the man’s chest. The fellow went over backward and Tom Jonah held him down with both paws on his chest and his bared teeth at the victim’s brown throat!
Dot screamed shrilly; but Tess said, with conviction: “Well! I think it serves him right. Let him holler. He had no business trying to steal Ruthie’s chickens.”
For the young man that Tom Jonah held on the ground, and threatened so dreadfully, was the very Gypsy that had gotten into the hen-coop at the old Corner House in Milton, weeks before.
“Now, don’t you be afraid for him, Dot,” added Tess, quite calmly. “Tom Jonah won’t really bite him—not as long as he keeps still and doesn’t try to get up——”
The fellow was moaning and begging just as he had when the big dog “treed” him on the henhouse roof.
“Tak’ away dog! Tak’ away dog!” he begged.
“I don’t know why we should—do you, Dot?” pursued Tess, undisturbed. “He was going to hurt her——”
Tess turned around. The strange girl who had helped them out of the cedar boat and later had brought them to the river bank from Wild Goose Island, had disappeared like a shadow!
“Why—why,” stammered Tess. “And she never said ‘Good-bye’!”
“I guess she was afraid of this man,” Dot said, eyeing the prostrate and miserable victim of Tom Jonah’s attack without much pity. “What shall we do with him?”
“Oh!” cried Tess, with a sudden sharp idea. “She was afraid of him. Let us help her. She helped us.”
“How will we?” inquired the smaller girl.
“Just let Tom Jonah hold him where he is. We will give that pretty girl a good chance to get away. Won’t we?”
“That will be just the thing,” agreed Dot. “We can sit down and wait. I hope it isn’t too long a walk to the camp, Tess. Somehow those strawberries didn’t stay by me—much. I’m hungry right now!”
“We’ll keep him here a few minutes. Then we’ll find the road and start right back home. I know the direction,” said Tess, with confidence.
The frightened Gypsy moaned and begged for them to call off the dog; and Tom Jonah growled most frightfully every time the man squirmed. Under other circumstances the girls would have been quite stricken with pity for the poor man; but he had tried to steal Ruth’s hens, and he had now frightened their new friend away, and, as Dot whispered, “it served him right.”
Of course, they knew that the big dog would not really harm the fellow.
After some fifteen minutes Tess got up and motioned Dot to do the same. “We’d better start. The afternoon is going,” she said to her younger sister. “And I guess it’s a long walk home. Come on, Tom Jonah.”
The old dog lifted his head enquiringly. The muscles of his shoulders and fore-paws relaxed.
“Come on!” commanded Tess. “Leave him alone. Let him up, Tom Jonah! I guess he has been punished enough. Don’t you think so, Dot?”
The smaller girl nodded seriously, staring at the trembling Gypsy. “I hope you won’t ever try to steal our Ruthie’s hens again,” she said, pointedly.
The moment the fellow knew he was free, he scrambled up and dodged into the bushes. He did not stay for a word.
“That big girl must have gotten away by this time,” Tess said, cheerfully. “And he is too scared to catch her, anyway.”
Which was probably true. The two small girls walked away from the river bank in the direction where they knew the auto-stage road lay. Tom Jonah paced beside them, looking about suspiciously, and licking his lips now and then with his red tongue.
It was remarkable how ferocious he had been with that Gypsy, and how perfectly kind he was to the small Kenways. And nothing much could have overtaken them just then that Tom Jonah would not have attacked.
They came out of the fringe of wood that bordered the river and crossed a farmer’s fields. But the house was at a distance, and in the other direction from Pleasant Cove and the camps; so the girls did not go to that house.
In fact, Tess felt quite brave now that she was again on the mainland. She was sure that they could easily find Willowbend Camp.
They came out into the hot, dusty road. It stretched before them as bare as a tennis-court and as hot as a sea-beach. The trees that bordered it were white with dust far up their trunks and the leaves of their lower branches, too, were dust-covered.
This was the result of rapidly passing automobiles on the road; but none of these vehicles was in sight now. The road seemed deserted.
Save for just one thing. Dot saw it before Tess.
“Oh, look!” the smaller girl cried. “Isn’t that a peanut man, Tess? Don’t you wish you had a nickel?”
“He isn’t a peanut man,” said Tess, after a sharp look at the man pushing the little wagon along the road before them.
“Isn’t he?” returned Dot, disappointedly.
“It’s a hot-frankfurter man,” declared Tess.
“Oh, Tess! a nickel would buy two frankfurter sandwiches,” gasped Dot. “And I’m so hungry.”
So was Tess. The thought of the steaming sausages lying on the split Vienna roll, with a spoonful of mustard on each half-sausage, was enough to make any hungry person’s mouth water. At least, any hungry person of the age of Tess and Dot Kenway.
Where the frankfurter man had been with his wagon away up this country road, the girls did not know; but before they overtook him they smelled the warm sausages and saw that the top of his boxlike wagon was covered over with a glass case and that everything was clean about his outfit.
So eager and hungry were they that Tess and Dot fairly trotted through the hot dust to overtake the man. He was a short, sturdy man in a blue shirt, khaki trousers, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. When Tom Jonah bounded along beside him, sniffing in a friendly fashion, he turned around and saw the girls.
“How-de-do!” he said, smiling. “You want a hot frankfurter, little girls?”
“Yes, sir,” said Dot, frankly.
“Oh, we can’t, sir—not till we get to Willowbend Camp,” Tess hastened to say, squeezing Dot’s hand admonishingly.
Dot’s lower lip trembled and the man asked:
“Why can’t you have ’em now?”
“We—we should have to ask Ruthie,” said Tess, slowly.
“Who’s she?”
“Our sister. We—we don’t carry any money in these old clothes. She’s afraid we’ll lose it out of our pockets,” said Tess, honestly.
“Oh-ho!” exclaimed the man.
“But we’re awful hungry,” ventured Dot. “And so’s my Alice-doll. We been shipwrecked, you see.”
“Shipwrecked?” asked the man, wonderingly.
“Not just that, Dot,” said Tess, doubtfully. “We were sort of castaways.”
“Well, we lost our boat, didn’t we?” demanded Dot. “And isn’t that being shipwrecked?” She was just hungry and tired enough to be rather “touchy.”
“Tell me about it,” said the frankfurter man, as the girls and Tom Jonah trotted along beside his little wagon.
So Tess—with much assistance from Dot—related their exciting adventures since the wooden-legged clam-digger had shown them what it was that squirted water up through the tiny holes on the clam-flat.
Sometimes the frankfurter man laughed, or chuckled; at other times he looked quite grave. And finally he insisted upon stopping under a broad, shady tree beside the road, and resting while he listened to the remainder of the story.
Meanwhile he opened the glass case and took out a couple of paper napkins and two rolls which were as white as snow when he split them with a very sharp knife. He buttered both sides of these rolls lavishly.
Then he opened the steaming frankfurter pot and oh! how the luscious steam gushed out! Dot grabbed Tess’ hand hard. She thought she was going to faint, for a moment—it smelled so good!
He selected two fat frankfurters and split them evenly. He placed them on the buttered rolls. He put on mustard with a lavish hand. And then he closed the rolls and wrapped the napkins about them.
Suddenly he saw Tom Jonah standing, too, watching him with wistful intentness, his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth. If ever a dog’s countenance expressed hunger, it was shown now in Tom Jonah’s face. But he was too much of a gentleman, just as his collar said, to bark.
So the frankfurter man, without saying a word, opened the pot again and took out a third sausage. This he did not split or put mustard on.
“Would you little girls like to eat a lunch now and pay me for it the next time you see me?” he asked, smiling at Tess and Dot.
“Oh!” gasped Dot, clasping her hands and almost letting the Alice-doll fall.
“You—you are so kind!” said Tess, her voice fairly trembling.
He passed the two wrapped sandwiches over with a polite bow. “You are very welcome,” he said. “And I am going to give your dog one for himself because he grabbed that Gypsy. He’s a brave dog and deserves one.”
“Oh! if you would be so good!” cried Tess.
Tom Jonah made one mouthful of the frankfurter. You see, he had not cared at all for the strawberries!
“Now,” said the frankfurter man, as the girls walked on beside him again, munching their sandwiches, “that road yonder to the left leads right down to the beach and to those tents. You can see the flags flying above them now—see?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” returned Tess and Dot, in delight.
“Then you can easy find your way. Good-day, young ladies. I know your sisters will be anxious to see you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tess said, not forgetting her manners. “And we shall not forget that we owe you for the sausages.”
“That’s right. Always pay your debts,” said the man, laughing, and trundled his cart on through the dust, while the Kenway sisters trudged down the shadier road toward the beach.
In fifteen minutes they were seen coming. The entire encampment had turned out to search for the lost children. The boys from Milton had gone in all directions to look for Tess and Dot.
It was only to Ruth and Agnes that the small girls related the details of their surprising adventure. And Agnes did not understand entirely, and was much troubled over the identity of the girl who had befriended her sisters in so strange a fashion.
Ruth had no difficulty in guessing who she was. It was the girl with the Gypsies who had masqueraded as the queen. The oldest Corner House girl was sure that it was she. And Ruth understood that she must be striving to get away from the Gypsies.
“I hope she won’t go so far from here that I shall never see her again,” thought Ruth. “For she was interested in Rosa Wildwood, I am sure; and it might be that she could tell me something about Rosa’s missing sister.”
While Agnes put forth many “guesses” and “supposin’s” about the strange girl, Dot had quite another problem in her enquiring mind. And finally, as they were getting ready for bed that night, she threw out a leading question which attracted the immediate attention of her three sisters:
“Say, Ruthie,” she asked, “how do frankfurters grow?”
“What?” gasped Agnes, and clapped a hand over her own mouth to keep from laughing.
“How do they grow, dear?” returned Ruth, rather taken aback herself.
“Goodness gracious, child!” exclaimed Tess. “They don’t grow on bushes like pea-pods.”
“Oh, no, of course not!” ejaculated Dot, who did not like to be considered ignorant. “A frankfurter flies, doesn’t it?”
“Mercy!” murmured Ruth. “Hear her!”
“Oh! I mean it crawls—it creeps. Of course,” Dot hurried to add.
Agnes exploded here. She could not keep in any longer.
“Well, I think you’re real mean!” complained Dot. “You won’t tell me. I guess it’s a fish, then. Does it swim?”
“Goodness!” cried Tess.
“Then they come in bunches like bananas!” declared the frantic Dot.
This was the worst yet. Agnes rolled on the matting of the bedroom and almost choked. Ruth herself was laughing heartily at her small sister as she gathered her into her arms and told her just how the sausage-meat was stuffed into the frankfurters’ skins.
“Well!” murmured Dot, at last, and rather sleepily. “I don’t care. I believe they are the very nicest things there are to eat—so there! Those the frankfurter man gave us were perfectly lovely.”
That was what suggested the Frankfurter Party, and the Frankfurter Party was one of the very happiest thoughts that Ruth Kenway ever evolved. We shall have to hear about it, in another chapter.