CHAPTER XVIII KIDNAPPED
The dull gray of evening hung over a calm sea. From out the west camethreats of sudden storm that, sweeping in with the speed of thought,might at any moment turn twilight into darkest night.
The two boys, Don and the city boy, Lester Hilton, had just completed thelaborious task of dragging a heavy dory up a rock-strewn beach. Don hadleft some lobster traps here. He had come ashore to pick them up.
Shading his eyes, Don gazed out to sea. Some object out there caught hiseye.
"It can't be a barrel," he said in a puzzled drawl. "It's too big. Can'tbe a sailboat, nor a motorboat, nor a punt, unless it is adrift. No oneis staying out while such clouds are threatening."
Climbing to a higher level, he paused to look again, and at once therecame over his face a look of deep concern.
"It can't be," he muttered. "How could it happen on a calm sea?" Closinghis eyes for a moment to secure a clearer vision, he stood there erect,motionless.
Then, with the suddenness of one who has received a terrible revelation,he exclaimed:
"It's Pearl and Ruth and your sister in the _Flyaway_. Their mast isgone. They are powerless. In five minutes it will be dark. Soon the seawill be white with foam. They are out there, your sister and mine, outthere! Just think!"
Lester did think. One instant his mind sped, the next his hand was on thedory.
"Yes," said Don, "but you must go alone."
"Alone?" The younger boy stood appalled.
"The dory will ride almost any storm. You must reach them, take them offthe schooner and bring them round the island to the lee side."
All the time he talked Don was helping to shove the dory off. "You can'tpossibly reach them before the storm and complete darkness come. Both ofus couldn't, not half way.
"I will guide you. I'll find you a light so strong you'll see all theway."
The younger boy stared as if he thought his companion mad.
"In the center of the island," Don spoke rapidly, "there is a powerfulsearchlight, a government light for use only in time of war or a greatemergency. You have no idea of its power, hundreds of thousands of candlepower. The keeper is away, but I know how to swing it into place, to puton the power, to direct its rays. Go! Quickly!" He gave the dory a stoutshove, then went racing up the bank.
The impossible sometimes happens. That a thirty-foot sailing vessel, asstaunch a craft as ever sailed the rock-ribbed sea, with a mast twice therequired thickness, should be drifting helpless with mast and sail castoff and lost from sight, should lie helpless in a calm sea while a stormcame tearing in from off the land was, in time of peace, you might say,impossible. Yet all this was just what was happening. The _Flyaway_ washopelessly adrift. What was more, Pearl Bracket, the golden-haired,freckle-faced girl of Peak's Island, and Ruth with her city friends,twelve-year-old Jessie Hilton and Betty, were aboard. How could all thishappen in one calm afternoon?
It had all come about so suddenly that even the four girls shudderingthere on the mastless schooner could scarcely believe it had happened atall. They had sailed to Witches Cove. Having dropped anchor within theshadows of the overhanging rocks, they had tried their hand at fishing.
It had been a curious afternoon, not exactly cloudy, yet not exactlyclear. A haze, a lazy mist, drifted here and there. Never did WitchesCove seem so spooky as now. Once as Pearl looked up from her fishing shesaw a film of gray rise in the darkest corner of the pool. As iffashioned by an invisible hand it took the form of a witch with high hatand hooked nose. She was even riding a broom.
Pearl touched Ruth's arm and pointed. Ruth saw and shuddered.
"Gray Witch is riding to-day," she said. "Something is sure to happen."In this she was not wrong.
The fishing was unusually good. Soon the deck of the _Flyaway_ was alivewith flapping fish. In the excitement the Gray Witch and all else wasforgotten.
Then had come the supreme moment. Jessie had hooked a twelve-pound rockcod. The cod had showed fight. Before she could draw him in he had fouledthe line among the kelp. So securely was he hooked that even then hecould not escape. So, with three girls tugging at one line and the fishat the other, the red kelp went swinging and swaying back and forth atthe bottom of the pool.
It was just at the moment when the kelp seemed about to lose its hold onthe rock and to come floating to the top with the magnificent fish in itswake, that Pearl, chancing to look away, dropped the line to spring backin an attitude of fear.
She found herself looking into a pair of dark eyes. Instinct told her towhom those eyes belonged. "The face-in-the-fire," her mind registered.
"The--the bombers!" she had whispered to Ruth.
Like a flash all that the little man of Witches Cove had told her passedthrough her mind. He, the man of the rocky island, was a Secret Serviceman in the employ of his government. He had been stationed there to traceand if possible capture two men who had been stealing high explosivesfrom the Army and Navy store houses. These men were supposed to belong toa band that was opposed to all organized society. Several disastrousexplosions had been laid to their door.
"If you can assist me in capturing them," the Secret Service man hadsaid, "you will not alone perform a great service to your country, butmay save many lives as well."
And here were the very men! Pearl could not doubt it. She shot one wildglance toward the cabin on the rocks. No one was in sight. Little hopefor aid.
"No use," she said aloud as she recognized the second man. It was one ofthe men who had stolen Ruth's punt and loaded it with dynamite. A coldshudder ran up her spine.
"Not a bit of use in the world," the man went on in a cold voice. "We gotyou. We'll teach you to meddle!"
At that, to her great terror, he produced a long whip such as was onceused by cruel slave owners. Cracking this about their ankles, he orderedthem down into the _Flyaway's_ cabin. Once they were down, he closed thedoor behind them.
For a whole hour, feeling the gentle roll of the boat, knowing they weregoing somewhere but having no notion what the destination might be, theycowered in great fear. Finding courage only by praying to the greatFather of all, they waited they knew not what.
At the end of that time they caught the sound of the strokes of an axe.This was followed by a sickening splash.
"The mast is gone!" Pearl thought to herself. "Will they sink our boatand leave us to drown?"
The two men had evidently planned for them a more cruel fate. Having cutaway the mast and taken the oars, they set the motor boat in which theyhad reached the schooner going once more, and left the _Flyaway_ and hercrew to drift helpless in the storm.
"Be broken up on the rocks!" Pearl's eyes were dry, but in her heart wasa solid weight of sorrow.
* * * * * * * *
Don was racing up a rocky trail while Lester was tugging with all hismight at the long oars, driving the heavy dory farther and farther outinto the face of the oncoming storm.
Then, like the dropping of a purple curtain on a stage, came wind, rainand deep darkness.
The testing of Lester Hilton, the reckless and daring city boy whobelieved that life was a joke, was at hand. He now stood face to facewith triple peril--night, the sea and the storm. He had no compass. Therewas no light to guide him. There was now only to wait and hope. This washardest of all.
With unfaltering footsteps Don hastened on into the dark until justbefore him a long low bulk loomed. This was the power house. In thishouse was the hoisting machine and the powerful dynamos that lifted thegreat searchlight. To break a window, to crawl through, to touch a leversetting a dynamo purring, to switch on a light, to throw a second lever,was but the work of a moment.
Then again, he was outside. A little up the hill, like a gigantic blackghost, some object was rearing itself upward. This was a frame on whichthe powerful searchlight rested. When not in use it lay prone. It mustnow be raised to an upright position. Powerful machinery was doing
this.
It was still leaning at a rakish angle when the boy sprang up the ladder.By the time it snapped into position he was in the small cabin above.Here again he threw on an incandescent lamp. One moment of suspense and agreat light flashed far out over the sea.
"Ah!" he breathed.
With skillful hand he began spraying the sea with light as a gardenersprays a lawn. Here, there, everywhere the light traveled. Once, for tenseconds his eyes were fixed upon a small gasoline boat ploughing its waythrough the tossing waves. Then that spot went dark. As yet his searchwas unrewarded.
But now, as the light swung closer in, it fell upon a boy in a largedory. He was battling the storm to keep his dory afloat.
"Lester." Don's heart swelled.
Swift as the flight of a gull, the light shot outward until it fell upona mastless boat wallowing in the trough of a wave. There it came to rest.
How the young city boy, little accustomed to the sea, pulling for thespot marked by that light, battled his way forward until at last,drenched, hands blistered, well nigh senseless with fatigue, heoverhauled the crippled boat, and how after that three girls and a boyfought the storm and won will remain one of the tales to be told roundisland cottage fires on stormy nights.
One incident of that night will always remain burned on Don's brain. Ashe held his light steadily in its place, there struck his ears adeafening crash that was not thunder, and instantly the sky was illuminedby a glare that was not lightning. When, a half hour later, he was freeto search the sea for the floundering motor boat which his light hadfirst picked up, it had disappeared.