For a long time after the others had retired, Florence sat in a huge upholstered chair, lights out, staring into the dark. She was thinking over the experiences of the past few weeks, trying to put them together in a geometric whole, just as an artist arranges the parts of a stained glass window.
“There’s Lucile’s experience in the old Spanish Mission,” she mused, “and my own in the museum. Then there’s Mark Pence’s visit to the old scow and the circular stairway. Then there’s the blue candlestick. It’s rare, mysterious and valuable. Why? The police are interested in it. Why? Then there’s the police-sergeant’s visit, and Lucile’s experience on the ice, and the two policemen visiting the old scow, and there’s that man on the bridge to-night, the two with the sled and the one sitting on the ice. It’s all mysterious, so it ought all to fit together somehow.”
For a long time she sat wrapped in deep thought. Then she started suddenly.
“Blue!” she whispered. “The face Lucile saw in the Mission was blue, illuminated and blue. In the story the old seaman told me the face of the god of the Negontisks was illuminated and blue. The candlestick I found was blue. What should be more natural than that a blue jade candlestick should be made in which to set a candle with which to illumine the blue god? Blue jade is valuable. A ring or stickpin set with a small piece of it is costly. That makes the candlestick both costly and valuable. All that,” she sighed, “seems to hang together.”
Again she sat for a time in deep thought.
“Only,” she breathed at last, “who ever heard of a tribe of Negontisks in America, let alone here in Chicago? Try to imagine a hundred or more near-savages, with no money and no means of transportation but their native skin-boats, traveling eight thousand miles over land and sea and ending up in Chicago. It can’t be imagined. It simply isn’t done. So there goes my carefully arranged puzzle all to smash.”
Throwing off her dressing-gown, she climbed into her berth, listening to the flag-rope lashing the mast for an instant, then fell fast asleep.
Next morning Florence was skating down the lagoon, deep in thoughts of the mysterious events of the past few days. So deeply engrossing were these thoughts that she did not see what lay before her. Suddenly her skate struck some solid obstacle. She tripped, then went sprawling. Her loosened skate shot off in another direction.
“That’s queer,” she murmured as she sat up rubbing her knees.
Glancing back over the way she had come, she saw nothing more than a circular raised spot which had formed when water had sprung up through a hole in the ice.
“That’s strange,” she mused, and rising, she hopped and glided back to the spot.
“Someone must have cut a hole in the ice,” she reflected, “though what they’d do it for is more than I can see. We youngsters used to do that to get a drink when we were skating on a little prairie pond, a long way from nowhere. But here the ice is fourteen inches thick and there’s a drink of water to be had for the asking up at the skate house.”
As she glanced down at the spot, another strange circumstance surprised her. “What makes that spot look so much bluer than the other ice?” she asked herself.
As she examined it more closely she saw that this patch of blue had a very definite outline, but rough and jagged, like the edges of a piece of cloth haggled by a child who is just learning to use a pair of scissors.
Having recaptured her fugitive skate, she clamped it to her foot and was about to go on her way when another startling fact arrested her.
“Why, that,” she thought, “is just about where that man was sitting last night; the one Marian and I saw who had apparently dropped in from nowhere.”
So struck with the discovery was she that she skated over to the edge of the ice where the sled drawn by the two strangers had left the snow. There she took good notice of the direction in which the sled had been going when it came upon the ice.
Turning about, she skated backward with her eyes on the track made by the sled runners. She was endeavoring to retrace the sled over the ice where no tracks were visible, in an effort to prove that the sled had arrived at the point on the ice where the hole had been cut when it turned and struck off at another angle.
So successful was she in this that she all but fell over the rise in the ice a second time.
“That’s that,” she murmured. “Now for something else.”
Skating rapidly to the end of the lagoon nearest the dry dock she circulated about until she discovered the spot at which the sled had left the ice.
Again guiding herself by the course taken by the sled, she skated backward and in a short time found herself once more beside the spot in the ice where the hole had been cut.
“That proves something,” she told herself, “but just how much I can’t tell. But I’ll leave that to study out to-night. Must hurry on or I’ll be late to my lecture.”
“That sled track went toward the dry dock,” she told herself a few moments later. “To-night when I go home I’ll try to trace it out and see where it went.”
Lucile was home early that day. Marian had not gone to school at all. She had stayed on the beach making sketches of the ice-jam on the lake front.
“I’ll be going out again to-night,” she told Lucile. “Wind’s shifted. It’s offshore now and rising. There are certain effects of lights and shadows which you get on the rim of a body of fresh water which you don’t in the sea ice. Sea ice is white, dull white, like snow. Fresh water ice is blue; blue as the sky sometimes. I want to catch it before it blows out again. But what brings you home so early, Lucile?”
“Cut my lecture. Headache,” she explained, pressing her temples. “Nothing much though. And, Marian,” she exclaimed suddenly, “what do you think? That story!”
“Did he take it?”
“The editor of the Literary Monthly? No, better than that.”
“Could anything be better than that?”
“Lots of things.”
“What is better?”
“Listen,” declaimed Lucile, striking a mock dramatic attitude. “He said, the literary editor did, that it was too good for his poor little publication! Fancy! ‘His poor little publication!’ My story too good! My story! A freshman’s story!” She burst into sudden laughter, but stopped abruptly and sat down pressing her temples and groaning: “My poor head!”
“You never can tell about it—about stories,” said Marian. “Heads either. You’ll have to go to bed early to-night and get a good night’s sleep. There’s been entirely too much excitement on board these last few nights.”
“He said,” Lucile went on, “that the Literary Monthly didn’t pay for stories. Of course I knew that. And he said that he thought I could sell my story; that he thought it was good enough for that. The technique was not quite perfect. There was too much explanation at the beginning and the climax was short, but the theme and plot were unusual. He thought that would put it over. He knew exactly the place to send it—‘Seaside Tales,’ a new magazine just started by a very successful editor. He knows him personally. He gave me a letter of introduction to him and I mailed the story to him right away. So you see,” she smiled folding her arms, “I am to be an authoress, a—a second George Eliot, if you please!”
“But Seaside Tales is published right down town. Why did you mail it?”
“Do you think,” said Lucile in real consternation, “that I would dare beard that lion of an editor in his den? The editor of a real magazine that pays genuine money for stories? Why I—I’d die of fright. Besides, one does not do it. Really one doesn’t.”
“What was your story about?” asked Marian suddenly.
“Why, I—I wasn’t going to tell, but I guess I will. It was about three girls living on a yacht in a dry dock. And, one night in a storm the yacht broke loose on the dry dock and went out into the water. Then it drifted out to sea. Then, of course, they had to get back to land. Wasn’t that dramatic?”
“Yes, very!” smiled Marian. “Goodness! I hope it never happens to the O Moo! Just think! Not one of us even knows how to start the engine.”
“I mean to have Dr. Holmes show me the very next time he and Mrs. Holmes come down.”
“He’ll think you’re crazy.”
“Maybe he will. But you never can tell.”
That was one time when Lucile was right; in this queer old world you never can tell.
When Florence returned from the university the shades of night were already falling. There was, however, sufficient light to enable her to follow the track of the sled she had seen the night before. This track led straight across the park to the beach, then along the beach in the direction of the dry dock. A few hundred yards from the dry dock it turned suddenly to the left and was at once lost among the tumbled masses of ice, where no trace of it could be found.
“Sled might be hidden out there,” she mused.
For a time she contemplated going out in search of it. When, however, she realized that it was growing quite dark, and recalled Lucile’s unpleasant experience of the night before, she decided not to venture.
“If they come back to the beach again,” she told herself, “I can pick up their tracks in the snow farther down.”
Walking briskly, she covered the remaining distance to the spot on the beach opposite the O Moo.
“Not yet,” she whispered, and climbing over the trestle she made her way on down the beach. Her eyes were always on the ground. Now she climbed a trestle, now walked round an anchor frozen into the sand, but always her eyes returned to the tracks in the snow. Tracks enough there were, footprints of men, but never a trace of a sled leaving the ice.
She had gone a considerable distance when she became conscious of some person not far away. On looking up she was startled to note that she had reached a point opposite the great black scow where the Orientals lived.
At the end of the scow stood a man. His face disfigured by a scowl, he stood watching her. He was dressed in the black gownlike garb of the Chinese. He wore a queue. There was, however, something strange about his face. She fancied she had seen him somewhere before, but where she could not tell.
Then the man moved out of the light that shone on him from a window and was swallowed up by the shadows.
“No use going farther,” she told herself. “If the sled belongs on the dry dock somewhere it would be the easiest thing in the world for two persons to lift it on their shoulders and carry it in from the ice. That would throw one completely off the trail.”
Turning, she retraced her steps along the beach to the trestle work on which the O Moo rested, then swinging about to the right she made her way to the yacht’s side.
Once on deck, she made certain that the other girls were aboard, then retraced her steps to the deck’s side, where she pulled down the canvas and tied it securely. For a moment she stood listening to the lash of ropes on the mast. The canvas covering bulged and sagged. Cool air fanned her cheeks.
“Going to be a bad storm,” she told herself. “Offshore wind, too. All the ice will go out to-night, and everything with it that isn’t tied down.” When all was tight on deck she slipped into the cabin.
Lucile, who ate very little dinner that night, retired early. Marian studied until nine-thirty. The clock pointed at eleven when Florence, with a sigh of regret, put down her psychology to prepare for sleep.
“Whew!” she breathed, “what a storm! Listen to the canvas boom! Like a schooner at sea! Hope it doesn’t tear the canvas away. Hope it doesn’t—”
She did not finish the sentence. The thought which had come to her was too absurd.
Once snugly tucked in her bed, she found her mind returning to the morning’s discovery. What did that new ice on the lagoon mean? Why had the hole been cut? Why was the ice blue? Did the sled and the man sitting on the ice the night before have anything to do with it? Did the man cut that hole? If so, why?
He might, she told herself, have had something to conceal, some valuables, stolen diamonds or gold. But how could he hope to recover it if he dropped it through a hole in the ice. The water beneath the ice was always murky and there was a strong current there. Anything dropped beneath that ice would be lost forever.
She remembered the two policemen whom Lucile had seen on the beach that same night. Perhaps those two men had been running from the officers, trying to conceal something. But how had the man come there on the ice? Perhaps—she started at the thought—perhaps this man rode there beneath the sled. The runners had been extraordinarily broad. A man could easily ride between them. The thought gave her a start.
She thought of Lucile’s experience in the old Mission, and of her own with the blue candlestick. Perhaps, she told herself, they dropped the blue god through the ice.
Then she smiled at herself. How could the blue god be in Chicago? If it were they would never drop it in the water beneath the ice where it could never be recovered. Yet why had the ice been blue? Why—
She fell asleep, to listen in her dreams to the lash of ropes, the boom of canvas and to dream of riding a frail craft on a storm-tossed sea.
It would be difficult to determine just why it is that one knows how long he has slept, yet we very often do know. One wakens in the middle of the night and before the clock strikes the hour he says to himself, “I have slept three hours.” And he is right.
When Florence awoke that night she knew she had been asleep for about five hours. It was dark, pitch dark, in the cabin. The storm was still raging.
“Just listen,” she murmured dreamily, “One could easily imagine that we were out to sea.”
There was a tremendous booming of canvas and a lashing sound which resembled the wash of the waves, but this last, she told herself, was the ropes beating the mast. She had dozed off again when some strange element of the storm brought her once more half awake.
“One would almost say the yacht was pitching,” she thought as in a dream, “but she’s firmly fastened. It is impossible. She—”
Suddenly she sat up fully awake. She had moved a trifle closer to the porthole. Her head had been banged against it.
“It is pitching!” she exclaimed in an awed whisper.
Her mind whirled. What had happened? Was the storm so violent that the O Moo was being rocked from side to side on her trestle. Would she soon topple over, to go crashing on the frozen sand? Or had they in some way been blown out to sea?
This last seemed impossible. She thought of the block beneath the wheels of the car on which the O Moo stood, then of the strong cable fastened to her prow.
“It is impossible!” she muttered.
There was one way to prove this. She proceeded to apply the test.
Turning a screw which held her porthole closed, she swung the metal framed glass wide open.
Instantly she slammed it shut. She had been soaked with a perfect deluge of water.
Her heart stopped beating. She tried to shout to the other girls, but her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. There could no longer be any doubt concerning the nature of the catastrophe which had come over them. How it had happened, she could not even guess. This much she knew: They were afloat.
“Girls! Girls!” Her own voice shouted to her like that of a ghost, “Marian! Lucile! Wake up! We’re afloat! The O Moo’s adrift!”
Marian groaned; sat up quickly, then as quickly fell back again. Her head had collided with a beam.
“What—what’s the matter?” she stammered.
There came a low moan from Lucile: “I’m so sick.”
“Seasick. Poor child,” said Florence.
“No—no, not that.” Lucile’s voice was faint. “It’s my head—it’s splitting. I can’t raise it. I—I’m afraid it’s going to be—be—bad.”
Florence leaped to the floor. Her feet splashed into a thin sheet of water which washed about on the carpet. The cold chill of it brought her to her senses. They were afloat.
Someone had cast them adrift. Was that someone on deck at this moment or had he merely cut the cable, removed the blocks and allowed the wind to do the rest? This must be determined at once.
Hastily dragging some rubbers on her benumbed feet, she splashed her way to the door. Having made sure that this was securely locked, she went to each window and porthole, fastening each as securely as possible. This done, she fought her way to Lucile’s berth and, steadying herself with one hand, placed the other on Lucile’s brow.
An exclamation escaped her lips. The forehead was burning hot. Lucile had a raging fever.
“If I had the coward who cut us loose,” she cried through clenched teeth, “I—I’d kill him!”
There are people who cannot sleep during a storm. It sets their nerves a-tingle, sets wild racing thoughts crowding through their minds and leaves them sleeplessly alert. It is as if a thousand wild witches rode on every mad rush of the wind, their shrill voices screaming in each blast, their fingers rattling at every windowpane and their breath puffing at the flickering light.
Mark Pence could not sleep during that storm. Rocking every schooner, yacht and yawl on its cradle of trestlework, it went racing out over the lake, carrying every movable object with it. After many vain attempts to close his eyes, he at last rose and drawing on his clothes, said to himself:
“I’ll go out and fight with it for a time. After that I may be able to sleep.”
“Whew! What a whooper!” he exclaimed as the wind, slamming the door after him, blew him half-way to the beach. Grappling with the wind, as one grapples a wrestling mate, he stooped low, then shot forward.
“Like springing against a volley-ball net.” He shrieked the words in wild defiance of the wind.
Then, steadily, step by step, he fought his way toward the nearest schooner. Having gained the lee of it he paused a moment for breath.
The storm came in gusts. Now in a blinding fury of snow, it blotted out everything about him. Now there was a lull. The wind appeared to pause to regain its breath. At such times as this his eyes penetrated the space before him.
“Don’t look quite right over there,” he grumbled. “Something the matter with the sky line. Not enough boats, one would say!”
He had regained his breath. For a moment he debated the advisability of venturing further into the storm. Finally he buttoned his coat collar tighter as he muttered:
“Go over and see.”
As he moved from his position of safety there came another gust. More furious than any that had gone before, it threatened to lift him from the earth and hurl him into the lake. But, stooping low, all but crawling, he made headway and, just as the lull came, gripped the top rail of the trestle on which the O Moo had rested.
Hardly had he seized it than his hand slipped and he went sprawling.
“That’s strange!” he muttered, “Awful slippery!”
Removing one glove, he felt of the other.
“Grease!” he muttered in blank astonishment. “Somebody’s greased that track.”
Then, with the suspicion of treachery dawning upon him, he glanced up at the spot where the O Moo should have been.
“Gone!” he exclaimed. “The O Moo’s gone! And six hours ago, she was here. I’d swear it. Saw it with my own eyes. Light in the window. Girls there. Now she’s gone and the girls with her. Gone in such a storm! What madness!” Again he thought of the greased track. “No! No! What treachery!”
From his pocket he drew a flashlight. He meant to examine that track. It had been heavily greased all the way down to the water. That the iron wheels of the car on which the O Moo had rested had passed down the track, there could be no doubt. Mingled with the grease there was much iron rust.
Drawing from his pocket a used envelope, he scraped a quantity of the grease into it, then replaced the envelope.
“Evidence,” he said grimly. “Might not be worth much; might mean a lot.”
The wind was roaring again. Clinging to the trestle, he waited its passing.
“Gone!” he exclaimed. “Gone out to sea! It’s those Chinks. What beasts! I’ll get them! Go after them in just another minute. Then I’ll make them help me launch my schooner to go in search of that O Moo. Three girls! Not one of them knows how to start the engine. Girl called Marian told me so. And in such a storm! Got to make sure though! Got to get all the evidence I can!”
Again he fought his way against the wind until he came to the point where the heavy blocks had held in place the wheels of the truck beneath the O Moo. These had been fastened by strong cleats. Hard, silent work had been required to loosen them. Throwing the light upon the blocks, he examined them carefully.
On the side of one he discovered a peculiar mark. The wood, flattened out under pressure for a space of some four square inches, was raised in the very center in two narrow lines, each an inch long. These lines crossed one another.
“Take it home. More evidence, perhaps.”
Having fought his way up to the place where the cable had been fastened he examined the loosened end without discovering anything peculiar about it.
“That’s all I can do here,” he decided. “Now for the rescue. Got to have help. Old Timmie’s not much good—too old. Fishermen all gone up the coast to fish through the ice. Chinks all there are left. Make ’em help undo what they’ve done. If they won’t come, I’ll fetch ’em!”
During a lull in the storm he returned to his schooner. There he deposited the “evidence,” then throwing a small, cloth-strapped case over his shoulder and thrusting a bottle into his pocket he again ventured out into the storm. This time he turned his face toward the scow inhabited by the Orientals.
* * * * * * * *
Hardly had Florence, standing by the side of Lucile’s berth, hurled out her fiery denunciation of the wretch who had cast their yacht afloat than the O Moo gave a sudden lurch which threw her to the floor.
Pandemonium broke loose. There came a crash of glass from the laboratory. Out of the darkness a bulk loomed at her. As she attempted to rise the thing appearing to spring at her, knocked her down. Then some other thing buried her deep.
The thing that had struck her was a heavy chair. She was buried beneath the blanket and mattress from her own berth.
As she attempted to extricate herself it seemed that the entire contents of the cabin played leapfrog over her head. Careening like a deserted airship the O Moo appeared to plunge prow first down an endless abyss, only to climb laboriously up on the other side.
This did not last for long. There was no engine going, no driving power. Suddenly she slipped into the trough of a huge wave and wallowed there helplessly, while tons of rushing water swept across her deck.
“The engine!” gasped Florence. “It should be started.”
Struggling to free herself, she thought of Lucile.
“May have been thrown from her berth,” she groaned.
Groping about she found Lucile’s berth, clung there while the yacht gave a wild, circling lurch, then felt for her sick companion.
Clinging to the rail of her berth, Lucile lay there silently sobbing.
Securing two blankets, Florence twisted them into ropes, then bound them across Lucile, one at her knees, the other at her chest.
“That’ll hold you,” she whispered hoarsely.
Starting across the cabin to the electric switch, she was caught again and thrown off her feet. She collided with something. That something put out two arms which encircled her. The two of them fell to the floor, then rolled half the length of it.
Having regained her breath, Florence put out a hand. She touched a garment. She knew by the feel of it that it was Marian. “Thank goodness!” she said, “you’re still here—and alive.”
In the midst of all this catastrophe, Marian began to giggle. “It’s too absurd!” she exploded. “I’ve traveled on the Arctic and Pacific, real oceans, and come here and have a mere lake kick up such a rumpus!”
“But, Marian,” Florence expostulated, “it’s serious. These winter lake storms are terrible. The ship may go to the bottom any moment. It wasn’t built for this. And there may be ice, too. One crack from ice and she’d burst like an eggshell. C’mon, we’ve got to get lights. Gotta start the engine.”
Dragging Marian to her feet, she made her way along the wall to the light switch.
There came a sudden flood of light which brought out in bold relief the havoc wrought by the storm. Tables, chairs, lounge, writing paper, notebooks, shoes, garments of all sorts, were piled in a heap forward. The heavy carpet was soggy with water.
One glance revealed that. The next instant the lights flickered and went out.
“Have to find a candle,” said Florence soberly. “Water on the battery wires. Caused a short circuit. We can’t hope to use electricity. Ought to get engine started some way. Got to get a candle. You just—”
“Watch out!” screamed Marian, as she leaped toward a berth.
The O Moo had suddenly shot her prow high in air. The entire contents of the cabin came avalanching down upon them.
* * * * * * * *
Having made his way, in the midst of the storm, to the door of the scow on the dry dock occupied by the Orientals, Mark Pence paused to arrange the cloth strap carefully over his shoulder and to feel in his pocket. Then he beat loudly upon the door.
As he had expected, he received no answer.
Without further formalities he put his knees to the door and gave it a shove. The flimsy lock broke so suddenly that he was thrown forward. Losing his balance, he plunged headforemost down a short flight of stairs.
With a low, whispered exclamation he sprang to his feet. Putting his ear to the wall, he listened. There were sounds, low grunts, slight shuffling of feet. It was uncanny. A cold perspiration stood out on his brow. “Danger here,” he whispered as he once more adjusted the cloth strap.
The corridor in which he was standing was dark, but a stream of blue light poured out from beneath a door to his right.
“Hey! You! Come out of there!” he shouted.
Instantly bedlam followed. Doors were flung open. A glaring blue light flooded all.
“O we-ee-ee! O wee-ee-ee,” came from every side.
A knife flashed before him. Springing back, he tripped over something, then suddenly plunged downward. He had fallen down the circular stairway. After a wild dizzy whirl, he reached bottom with a bump.
Immediately he was on his feet. His hand gripped the bottle. It was dark down here; dark as a dungeon.
“Got to get out of here,” he whispered. “Whew! What a lot of them! Twenty or thirty! No use hoping for help from them. Fool for thinking I could. Got to get out and find help somewhere else—and get out quick. Be coming down.”
Drawing something from the case slung across his shoulder, he pulled it down over his face. It was a gas mask, his old war mask, recharged.
Gripping the bottle in his pocket, a bottle of Lucile’s quick action gas, he began to climb the stairs.
He had made two-thirds of the distance when, sensing someone close to him, he threw his flashlight open.
Right before him, grinning fiendishly, a knife between his teeth, was a giant Oriental. Mark did not wait for the attack he knew was coming. He drew back his arm. When it swung forward his hand held the bottle of gas—he sent it crashing against the iron post.
The Oriental sprang back up the stairs. Following him closely, Mark made a dash for the door. All about him sounded wild exclamations.
“Gas getting in its work,” he muttered, darting among the writhing bodies. He reached the foot of the short stairs which led to the outer door. Now his hand was on the knob. And now the door flew open. He was free.
But what was this? Just as he made a dash for it, the gruff voice of someone very near him shouted:
“Here they come. Nail ’em. There’s the first one. Got a mask on. Get him!”
That was all he heard, for a stunning blow crashed on his head; he staggered, fell, then all was dark.
Florence and Marian lay clinging to the bare springs of a berth. They had made that point of safety before the avalanche of furniture, books and bric-a-brac had reached their end of the cabin. They were enduring discomforts beyond description. The yacht was now pitching from side to side in an alarming fashion. The wires of the spring on which they rested cut their tender flesh. Their scant clothing was saturated with cold water. The cabin had grown cold. Since the burning of the electric fuses, there was no heat. They were chilled to the bone, yet they dared not move. The heavy furniture, pitching about as it did, was a deadly menace. Here, above it all, they were safe.
As Florence lay there, benumbed with cold, suffering agonies of suspense, listening to the thud and smash of furniture, the rush and crush of waves that washed the deck, awaiting the crash which was to be the final one, only one question occupied her mind: How and when would the final moment come? She dared not hope that the O Moo would ride such a storm safely.
“Would the O Moo,” she asked herself, “turn turtle in the trough of a wave and, floating, mast down, would she hold them there to drown like rats in a cage? Or would some giant wave stave her in to sink to the bottom like a water-soaked log?”
An answer was postponed. The O Moo rode bravely on. They were in the worst of it; she was sure of that. “Ought to get the engine started,” she told herself. “Then we could cut the waves; ride them, not wallow along in a trough.”
She half rose to attempt to reach the engine room.
“No use,” she groaned; “no light. If we fool around with gasoline and a candle we’ll blow the whole thing up.”
But even as she thought this, she became conscious of a dim light. What could it be? She sat up quickly, then she uttered a hoarse laugh.
“First gray streak of dawn,” she muttered. Then she thought of Lucile.
“Stay where you are,” she said to Marian. “I’m going to try to get to Lucile.”
By the aid of the feeble light she saw her opportunity to vault over a careening chair and to make a dash for it. A second later she was at Lucile’s side.
“Lucile!” she said softly. “Lucile!”
The girl’s eyes were closed. A sudden fear seized Florence and her heart stood still a beat. Was Lucile asleep, unconscious, or—or was she dead?
* * * * * * * *
Over in the darkness and storm by the old scow, Mark Pence was slowly regaining consciousness. At first he imagined that a tiny train of cars was running about on the top of his head. This illusion vanished. He felt something hard in his mouth—tried to think what it was. He had been gagged! That was his first thought. No, that wasn’t it. He was breathing through the thing. The mouthpiece to his mask! That was it. He had kept it in his mouth.
He was fully conscious now but did not attempt to sit up. Footsteps were approaching. He heard a voice.
“They got away,” a man’s voice grumbled.
“All but one. Drunk, that’s what they was. You can’t hardly shoot drunk men.”
The first voice retorted:
“No, you can’t.”
“Well, anyway, we got one; the one with the mask. Didn’t hit him hard. He ought to be coming round.”
Mark tried to discover the meaning of all this. The place had been raided. The Orientals had escaped. They had swarmed out yelling like mad men probably. The quick action gas would make them act as if under the influence of liquor. Probably they had tumbled the raiders over. But who were these raiders?
He did not have long to wait for the answer. A rough hand dragged the mask from his face. He looked up into the frank blue eyes of a burly policeman.
“You’re comin’ round. Sit up. Why, you’re no Oriental! You’re a white kid. What you doin’ here?”
Mark sat up and told them what he had been doing.
“That quick action gas now,” laughed one of the men, “wouldn’t be bad stuff for the police force now and again.”
Suddenly Mark made an effort to rise. He had thought of the plight of his friends on the O Moo.
“You—you’ll help me launch my schooner!” he exclaimed.
“What’s the idea?”
“Why you see those girls in the O Moo don’t know how to start their engine. Somebody’s got to bring them in.”
“What’s your schooner?”
“The Elsie C.”
“That turtle shell? You’d be committin’ suicide to go in her. You come along with us. We’re holdin’ you as a material witness and—and to prevent you from committing suicide by trying the lake in that shell.”
Reluctantly Mark obeyed.
“Can’t something be done?” he demanded desperately.
“Not before morning. Not much then, probably. How’d you find a yacht blowin’ round loose in this whirlin’ bag of snow?”
* * * * * * * *
There is a bottom to every depth, a state of darkness which cannot be exceeded, a limit even to despair. As Florence looked upon Lucile’s closed eyes she reached the bottom; experienced the utter darkness; found the limit of despair.
And then a strangely joyous thing happened.
Lucile’s eyes opened. She smiled faintly. Strange to say, in the midst of this tumult, she had merely fallen asleep.
Florence took a new and firmer grip on hope.
“How—how do you feel?” she stammered.
“I think I am better,” Lucile whispered. “Where are we?”
“We’re all right,” said Florence quickly. “Day is breaking. The storm will go down as the sun rises. They’ll be after us in a tug. In a few hours we’ll be back on the dock?”
She said all this very quickly, not knowing how much of it she believed herself, but feeling quite sure that Lucile ought to believe it. Just then a chair, pitching across the floor, caught her behind the knees and sent her sprawling.
The very shock of this set her blood tingling. “Believe we could do something about the furniture now it’s getting light,” she told herself.
“Marian,” she called, “come on down and let’s see what we can do to save things. We’re ruined as it is. No more university for us. It will take all the money we have to put this cabin back into condition. But we might as well save what we can.”
A table came lurching at her. She caught it as if it were a piece of gymnasium equipment. Then rescuing a water-soaked sheet from the floor she tied the table to a hand-rail.
Marian joined her in pursuit of the cabin furnishings. It really grew into quite a game. If a chair came at them too viciously they were obliged to vault over it and bring up an attack from the rear. If a whole platoon of tables and chairs leaped at them in the same second, they took to the cots.
Little by little order was restored. When a survey had been made it was found that one table was broken to splinters, two chairs had broken legs and numerous books and pictures had been utterly ruined.
“It might have been worse,” said Florence cheerfully.
“Yes,” agreed Marian, “We might have gone to the bottom. I do believe the storm is letting up.”
She attempted to look out of a porthole. Daylight had come. Snow had ceased falling but a heavy fog was driving over the turbulent waters.
“Fine chance of anyone finding us,” Marian whispered.
“Sh!” Florence warned as she shook a finger at Lucile’s berth, then aloud: “Boo! but I’m cold. Where are our clothes?”
Marian pointed mournfully at a mass of soggy rags in the corner. “No!” she exclaimed suddenly, “no, not all. We put our evening skirts and middies and slippers in the hammock of our berths. And,” she shouted joyously, “they are there still.”
After some desperate struggles at keeping their balance and dressing at the same time, they found themselves warmly clad and immediately matters took on a different aspect.
“I believe,” ventured Florence, “that we might get the generator going. There’s just one place where water would cause a short circuit and that can be dried out by a candle. Then we can put in a new fuse and that little old friend of ours will be chug-chugging as well as ever. Not that I feel any need of heat,” she mocked with a shrug and shiver, “but you know the supplying of warmth to our homes has become a social custom.”
Having taken a candle from a drawer she lighted it, lifted a trap door and descended to the generator. She was relieved to note that the O Moo had shipped very little water.
“She’s a dandy staunch little craft,” she sighed. “It’s a pity to have abused her so. I’d like to have a hand on the person who turned her loose.”
For a quarter of an hour she worked patiently on the generator; then there came a sudden pop-pop-pop and the hardy little machine was doing its work once more.
At once a drowsy warmth began to creep over the cabin.
The storm was really beginning to abate. Waves no longer washed the deck. The O Moo rose high, to fall low again as great, sweeping swells raced across the surface of the lake, but she did not pitch and toss.