Front matter (continued 2)

"What would I ever say to Bertha and Mrs. Foley if anything happened to the child!" Jessie murmured.

CHAPTER XI

TROUBLE

Jessie was beginning to learn that to guard the welfare of a lively youngster like Henrietta was no small task. The worst of it was, she was so fond of the little girl that she worried about her much of the time. And Henrietta seemed to have a penchant for getting into trouble.

Jessie called, and she called again and again, as she ploughed through the sand, and heard in reply only the shrieks of the gulls and peewees. Gray clouds had rolled up from the Western horizon and covered completely the glow of sunset. It was going to be a drab evening, and all the hollows were already filled with shadow.

Jessie toiled up the slope of one sand-hill after another, calling and listening, calling and listening, but all to no avail. What could have become of Henrietta Haney?

Suddenly Jessie fairly tumbled into an excavation in the sand. Although she could not see the place, her hands told her that the hole was deep and the sand somewhat moist. The hole had been dug recently, for the surface of the dunes was still warm from the rays of the sun.

She stumbled down the slope of the sand dune and found another hole, then another. Dark as it was in the hollow, when she kicked something that rattled, she knew what it was.

"Henrietta's pail and shovel!" Jessie exclaimed aloud. "She has been here."

She picked up the articles. Before leaving New Melford she had herself bought the pail and shovel for the freckle-faced little girl.

Where had the child gone from here? Already Jessie was some distance from the group of bungalows. As Henrietta insisted upon believing that most of the island belonged to her "by good rights," there was no telling what part of it she might have aimed for after playing in the sand.

Jessie shouted again, her voice wailing over the sands almost as mournfully as the cries of the sea-fowl. Again and again she shouted, but without hearing a human sound in reply. She labored on, and it grew so dark that she began to wish one of the others had come with her. Even Amy's presence would have been a comfort.

She came to the brink of a yawning sand-pit, the bottom of which was so dark she could not see it. She began skirting this hollow, crying out as she went, and almost in tears.

Suddenly Darry's voice answered her. She was fond of Darry—thought him a most wonderful fellow, in fact. But there was just one thing Jessie wanted of him now.

"Have you seen her?" she cried.

"Not a bit. I have been away down to the lighthouse. Nobody has seen her there."

"Oh! Who you lookin' for?" suddenly asked a voice out of the darkness.

"Henrietta!" shrieked Jessie, and plunged down into the dark sand-pit.

"Who's lost?" asked the little girl again. "Ow-ow! I—I guess I been asleep, Miss Jessie."

"Has that kid shown up at last?" grumbled Darry, climbing to the sand ridge.

"Is it night?" demanded Henrietta, as Jessie clasped her with an energy that betrayed her relief. "Why, it wasn't dark when I came down here."

"How did you get down there?" demanded Darry from above.

"I rolled down. I guess I was tired. I dug so much sand——"

"Did you dig all those holes I found, Henrietta?" demanded the relieved Jessie.

"Why, no, Miss Jessie. I didn't dig holes. I dug sand and let the holes be," declared the freckle-faced little girl scornfully.

Darry sat down and laughed, but while he laughed Jessie toiled up the yielding sand hill with her hand clasping Henrietta's. "Ow-ow!" yawned the child again. "When do we eat, Miss Jessie? Or is eating all over?"

"Listen to the kid!" ejaculated Darry. "Here! Give her to me. I'll carry her. Want to go pickaback, Hen?"

"Well, it's dark and nobody can see us. I don't mind," said Henrietta soberly. "But I guess I'm too big to be lugged around that way in common. 'Specially now that I own this island—or, most of it—and am going to have money of my own."

"She's harping on that idea too much," observed Darry to Jessie, in a low tone.

The latter thought so too. Funny as little Henrietta was, the stressing of her expected fortune was going to do her no good. Jessie began to see that this fault had to be corrected.

"Goodness!" she thought, stumbling along after the young collegian and his burden, "I might as well have a younger sister to take care of. Children, as Mrs. Foley says, are a sight of trouble."

They heard Amy and Burd shouting back of the bungalow, and they responded to their cries.

"Did you find that young Indian?" cried Burd.

"You've hit it. This little squaw should be named 'Plenty Trouble' rather than 'Spotted Snake, the Witch.'"

"Why," said Henrietta, sleepily, "I never have any trouble—of course I don't."

It was about as Jessie said, however: They were never confident that the freckled little girl was all right save when she was asleep. She had bread and milk and went right to bed when they got home with her. Then the evening was a busy one for the quartette of older young folks.

The radio set was put into place in the library of the bungalow. They had brought the two-step amplifier and proposed to use that for most of their listening in, rather than the head-phones. Although Darry and Burd helped in this preliminary work, the girls really knew more about the adjustment of the various parts than the college youths.

But in the morning Darry and Burd strung the wires and completed the antenna. The house connection was made and the ground connection. By noon all was complete and after lunch Jessie opened the switch and they got the wave-length of a New York broadcasting station and heard a brief concert and a lecture on advertising methods that did not, in truth, greatly interest the girls.

After that they tuned in and caught the Stratfordtown broadcasting. They recognized Mr. Blair's voice announcing the numbers of the afternoon concert program.

But radio did not hold the attention of these young people all the time, although they had all become enthusiasts. They were at the seashore, and there were a hundred things to do that they could not do at home in Roselawn. The sands were smooth, the surf rolled in while ruffles, and the cool green and blue of the sea was most attractive. One of the safest bathing beaches bordering Station Island was directly in front of the bungalow colony.

At four o'clock they were all in their bathing suits and joined the company already in the surf or along the sands. In any summer colony acquaintanceships are formed rapidly. Jessie and Amy had already seen some girls of about their own age whom they liked the looks of, and they were glad to see them again at the bathing hour.

"Is it a perfectly safe beach?" Mrs. Norwood asked, and was assured by her husband that so it was rated. There were no strong currents or undertows along this shore. And, in any case, there was a lifeguard in a boat just off shore and another patrolling the sands.

"I ain't afraid!" proclaimed Henrietta, dashing into the water immediately. "Come on, Miss Jessie! Come on, Miss Amy, you won't get drowned at my island."

"What a funny little thing she is," said one of the friendly girls who overheard Henrietta. "Does she think she owns Station Island?"

"That is exactly what she does think," said Amy, grimly.

"I never!" drawled the girl. "And there is a girl up at the hotel who talks the same way. At least, when she was down here yesterday she said her father owns all this part of Station Island and is going to have the bungalows torn down."

Jessie and Amy looked at each other with understanding.

"I guess I know who that girl is," said Amy quickly. "It's Belle Ringold."

"Yes. Her name is Ringold," said their new acquaintance. "Do you suppose it is so—that her father can drive us all out of the cottages? You know, we have already paid rent for the season."

CHAPTER XII

A DOUBLE RACE

Amy Drew scoffed at the thought of Belle Ringold's tale of trouble for the "bungalowites" being true.

"She is always hatching up something unpleasant," she told the neighbor who had spoken of Mr. Ringold's claim to a part of Station Island. "We know her. She comes from our town."

But little Henrietta continued to tell anybody who would listen that she owned a part of the island and expected to take possession of the golf links almost any day. The funny little thing, however, was very generous in inviting people to remain on "her island," no matter what happened.

"Something has got to be done about that child," said Jessie, sighing. "I can't control her. She does say the most awful things. She has no manners at all!"

"He, he," chuckled Amy. "Hen was built without any controller. I wouldn't worry about her, Jess. She'll come out all right."

"I hope she comes out of the water all right," murmured her chum, starting again after the very lively little girl who occasionally made dashes for the surf as though she proposed to go right out to sea.

But for one person Henrietta had some concern. That was Mrs. Norwood. She thought Jessie's mother was a most wonderful person. And when Mrs. Norwood had a chair and umbrella brought to the sands and sat down within sight of Henrietta, the older girls had some opportunity of having a little amusement with the college boys.

"Come on," Darry Drew said. "This staying inshore is no fun. Beat you to the raft, girls, and give you ten yards start."

"O-oh! You can't!" cried his sister, dashing at once for the sea.

"Hold on! Hold on!" commanded Darry. "I don't believe you even know how long ten yards is. Both you girls go in and stand even with that pile yonder. You are headed for the raft. You see the life saver beyond it, I hope?"

Amy made a face at him, settled her bathing cap more firmly, and looked at Jessie.

"Ready, Jess?" she asked.

"We'll just beat them good," declared her chum. "They always think they can do things so much better than us girls."

"'We' girls," corrected Amy, giggling.

"'We' or 'us'—it doesn't so much matter, as long as we win the race," said Jessie.

"All ready out there?" demanded Darry.

"They're edging out farther," observed Burd Alling. "It wouldn't matter if you gave them a mile start; they'd take more if they could. Give 'em an inch and they'll take an ell," he quoted.

"You don't know what an ell is," scoffed his friend.

"It's something you put on a house after you think you've got all the rooms you'll ever need. I know," declared Burd, grinning.

"Come on out!" retorted Darry. "Cut the repartee. You have got to swim your little best, for those two girls are no slow-pokes."

"You've said something," agreed Burd. "Shoot! I am ready, Gridley."

"Huh!" exclaimed his chum. "You have even forgotten your Spanish War history."

"Shucks! They change history so fast now you don't more than learn one phase than you have to forget it and learn some other fellow's 'hindsight' of important events. The only way to get history straight," declared the philosophical Burd, "is to be Johnny-on-the-spot and see things happen."

"Now!" shouted Darry to the girls.

The four splashed in, the girls starting with a breast stroke and the boys having to run for some distance until the sea was deep enough to enable them to swim. The water beyond the ruffle of surf was almost calm. At least, the waves did not break, but heaved in, in smooth rollers. As Amy had said: The sea was taking deep-breathing exercises.

Just now, however, she was not making jokes. The two girls were doing their best to win the race. Darry was a long, rangy fellow, and his over-hand stroke was wonderful. Burd Alling—"tubby" as he was—was an excellent swimmer. The girls started with a dash, however, and they kept up their speed for some rods before either felt any fatigue.

The diving raft was a long distance out from the beach, because the sandy bottom here sloped very gradually. This part of the island was ideal for swimming and bathing. If it was finally proved that the old Padriac Haney estate belonged to little Henrietta, she would control the longest strip of beach on the island.

Amy flashed a glance over her shoulder to see how close they were pursued, and almost lost stroke.

"Come on!" panted Jessie. "Don't let them beat you."

"Ain't—go-ing—to," gasped her chum, in four short breaths.

They were more than half way to the raft, and it really seemed as though the stronger—and longer—arms of the two college boys were not aiding them to overtake the Roselawn girls. The latter began to congratulate each other upon this—with glances. They did not waste any more breath in speech.

Rising high to change stroke, Jessie turned on her side and did the over-hand. It heaved her ahead of her chum for a yard or so; and it likewise enabled her to see over the raft. The raft chanced to be deserted, nor were there any swimmers between her and the boat of the lifeguard beyond the raft.

The man in the boat suddenly stood up. He began waving his arms and shouting. As he was looking shoreward Jessie thought he must be cheering her and her chum on. She forged still farther ahead of Amy, and the lifeguard became more energetic in his motions.

Suddenly he dropped upon the seat of his boat, grabbed the oars, and pulled the bow of the craft around, heading it seemed, for the raft. He did act peculiarly.

From behind her Jessie heard faintly a cry from her chum:

"Oh, Jess! What's that? What is it?"

"Why, it is the lifeguard," rejoined Jessie Norwood, flashing another glance over her shoulder, but continuing to thrash forward at her very best speed.

"No, no! That thing! In the water!" At first Jessie saw nothing ahead but the raft. She thought the lifeguard was hurrying to the raft to meet Amy and herself if they won the race. Another glance that she flashed back swept the smooth, rolling sea as far as Darry and Burd, endeavoring to overcome the handicap they had given the two girl chums.

It was only then that Jessie realized that something must be happening—some threatening thing that she did not understand. From the rear Darry's hail reached Jessie's ear:

"Turn back! Come back, Jess!"

"Why! what does he think?" considered Jessie, amazed. "That I am going to stop and let him and Burd beat us? I—guess—not!"

Then she heard the voice of the lifeguard. He was driving his boat inshore with mighty strokes; but he sat facing shoreward, too, using his oars back-handed. He shouted:

"Shark! Shark! Look out for the shark!"

And behind Jessie Norwood her chum took up the cry:

"Shark! Oh, Jess! Shark!"

The word, which had never meant much to Jessie Norwood in her life before, being merely the name of a quite unknown fish, suddenly became the most important of words! She whirled over and took up the breast stroke. She rose high in the water again to look.

Off at one side and seemingly swimming toward them from a tangent, came a gray, sail-like thing, the like of which the Roselawn girl had never seen before. She accepted as true however the identification of the lifeguard. He should know.

The race to the raft became suddenly a double race. More than ever did Jessie Norwood wish to win it! She desired to outswim the dangerous fish of which she had heard such terrible stories.

CHAPTER XIII

MORE THAN ONE ADVENTURE

Jessie was badly frightened, but she was not too scared to swim as hard as she could for the diving raft. The lifeguard drove his boat around the end of the raft toward the gray, sail-like object which had so startled them all. Jessie remembered of reading that the dorsal fin of a shark shows above water when it swims at the surface. This odd looking thing must be it—it must be!

She measured the distance between it and herself with some calculation. It came on in a halting, undecided way. Perhaps the shark had not yet caught sight of any of the swimmers. Jessie flung up her arm and shouted at the top of her voice to her chum:

"Come on! Come on! Don't let him get you!"

Amy was struggling so hard to reach the raft now that she had no breath left for speech. Jessie saw her splashing on in her wake. Behind, the boys were making a great splashing too, and Jessie realized that it was for an object. The shark might be frightened away if they made disturbance enough in the water.

Jessie was now very near the raft and the other three were bunching up not far behind her. The lifeguard shot by in his boat, yelling like mad. Darry shouted:

"Get aboard the raft, girls! Burd and I will beat him off till you are landed!"

"You come right on here, Darrington Drew!" sputtered his sister. "What good will you ever be if you get your leg bit off?"

Jessie reached the raft and seized a loop of rope hanging from it. If it had not been for this assistance she doubted if she could have hauled herself out of the water. When Amy arrived, her chum was lying over the edge of the refuge, and reached one arm out for her.

"Quick! Quick!" cried Jessie.

"Do—don't scare me so!" gasped Amy. "I—I feel just as though he was nibbling at my toes right now!"

But it seemed no laughing matter to Jessie Norwood. Her chum, however, would find a joke in even the most serious circumstance. And the moment she lay on the raft beside Jessie she began to laugh, gaspingly.

"This is no laughing matter!" Jessie declared. "How can you, Amy? Darry and Burd——"

At that instant a wild shout rose from the two collegians and from the lifeguard who had rowed so energetically to their rescue. Amy broke off suddenly in her nervous laughter.

"He's got 'em!" she shrieked. "Oh! Oh!"

But, strange though it seemed to her, Jessie realized that Darry and Burd were laughing. And the astonished expletives that the guard emitted did not seem to show fear.

"What is the matter?" Jessie demanded, standing up.

"And where is the shark?" asked Amy, likewise scrambling to her feet.

The boys were hanging to the side of the guard's boat. He was fishing for something in the water with an oar. He finally got the object and raised it aloft.

"What is it?" repeated Jessie.

"The shark!" shrieked her chum.

It actually was all the shark there was—a pair of partly deflated swimming wings which, carried here and there by the wind, had looked like a shark's dorsal fin at a distance.

"Good thing you girls saw it," declared Darry, when the boys lumbered along to the raft. "If you hadn't been so scared you never would have beat us. Would they, Burd?"

"Of course not," agreed his friend. "And how Jess can swim—when there is a man-eating shark after her!"

"Don't make fun," Jessie said, somewhat exasperated. "It might have been a shark. Then where would you have been?"

"Either here or inside the shark," said Darry. "One thing sure, he never could have caught you girls."

"Well," Amy sighed, "we had all the excitement of racing with a shark, even if the shark was only in our minds. I'll never be so scared by one again."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Jessie. "I know I shall always be nervous in the water here after this. I'll always be looking for one. What an awful feeling it is to try to swim when one is being pursued by——"

"By a pair of swimming wings," chuckled Burd. "Some imagination you've got, my dear Jess."

There was a serious side to the matter, however. Although the shark scare had proved to be groundless, the quartette decided to say nothing about it to those ashore.

"Especially to Momsy," Jessie Norwood said. "I don't want to make her nervous. Little things annoy her."

"She'll be some annoyed by little Hen, then," chuckled Amy. "Hen is worse than any shark you ever saw."

"How terrible!" cried Jessie. "She is not a bad child at all, but she is wild enough."

When they swam ashore later they found Henrietta on her good behavior with Momsy. Nobody on the sands had chanced to see the excitement out by the raft. Or, if they had, it was merely supposed that the four young people from Roselawn were playing in the water.

Jessie, however, felt rather serious about it. And she knew she would never go into the sea again at Station Island without thinking about sharks.

While they were playing hand-ball on the beach, still in their bathing suits, a low-wheeled pony carriage came along the drive from the upper end of the island, and Amy's sharp eyes spied and recognized the two girls seated on the back seat of the vehicle.

"And that's Bill Brewster driving!" cried Amy. "Some difference between the speed of that quadruped and his sports car."

"One thing sure," chuckled Burd. "He can't do so much damage with that old Dobbin as he did with the car he drives about New Melford."

"Belle and Sally have got a hen on," said the slangy Amy to Jessie. "See them whispering together?"

"I can see what they are up to from right where I stand," announced Darry, dropping the ball. "Come on, Burd! Let's beat it for the raft again. That's one place those two girls can't follow us without bathing suits."

"He, he!" giggled his sister. "I hope they sit right down here and wait for you to come ashore."

"Send out our supper by the lifeguard," called Burd, as he followed his chum into the surf. "We fear sharks less than we do a certain brand of featherless biped."

"I suppose it would be too pointed for us to run away," said Amy to Jessie, as Bill Brewster drove the pony carriage out on to the beach.

"Belle has got her eye on us, that is a fact," agreed Jessie.

She was curious, especially after what their new friend had told them an hour before about the story that Belle Ringold was circulating. Belle was eager to talk—as she always was.

"So your folks got one of these bungalows, did they, after all, Jess Norwood?" she began. "I suppose you know there is no surety that you can keep it a month?"

"I don't know about that. I guess father attended to the lease. And he is a lawyer, you know," said Jessie, quietly.

"Pooh! Yes," said Belle, tossing her head. "But there are lawyers and lawyers! My father has the smartest lawyer in New York working for him. And I suppose you know about the claim he has against all the middle of this island?"

"We have heard that you have a claim on the island—or think you have," said Amy slyly. "But, then, Belle, you always did think you owned the earth."

"Now, Miss Smartie, don't be too funny! Father is going to prove his right to the golf course and all these bungalows. Don't you fear—Why! There's that terrible Henrietta Haney! How did she come here?"

"She is with us," said Jessie shortly.

"Oh, indeed! One of your week-end guests, I suppose?" scoffed Belle. "We are entertaining General O'Bigger and Mrs. O'Bigger at the hotel. Of course, we would not live in one of these small bungalows—not even if we needed a vacation."

"You wouldn't," said Henrietta promptly, "because I wouldn't let you."

"Oh! Oh! Hear that child!" cried Sally Moon.

"Nor you, neither," declared Henrietta. "All them houses are mine—or they are going to be."

"Hush, Henrietta," commanded Jessie, in a low voice.

"Didn't the funny little thing say something before about owning an island?" asked Belle, somewhat puzzled.

"And this is it," said Henrietta. "You just try to come into any of them bungleloos! I'd get a policeman and have him take you out. So now!"

"Will you behave?" said Jessie, feeling like shaking the child, and in reality leading her away.

Amy came running after them in the midst of Jessie's berating of the freckle-faced girl.

"Did you ever hear such nonsense?" Jessie's chum demanded. "Belle declares the case is coming up in court next week and that her father is going to win. Did you ever?"

Mr. Norwood was sitting with his wife when they came near to that lady's beach chair. Jessie was anxious enough to ask about Belle's statement regarding the imminent court investigation of the controversy over Station Island.

"Why, yes, Ringold's lawyers claim they have found new evidence entitling him to be heard as a claimant to the Padriac Haney estate," the lawyer acknowledged. "But there may not be anything in it."

"But is there a possibility, Robert?" Momsy asked, seeing how anxious both Jessie and the little girl looked.

"There is nothing sure in any case that comes into court," declared her husband. "Besides, those attorneys of Ringold's are sharp fellows. He may make his claim good."

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" burst out Henrietta. "And then I won't have nuthin'? No island, nor golf link, nor—nor nuthin'? Oh, dear me!"

"Never mind, honey," Jessie begged. "You have friends. You have me." And she sat down on the sands and took the freckle-faced little girl in her arms.

"Ye-es, Miss Jessie. I know I got you," sobbed Henrietta. "But—but you ain't a golf link, nor you ain't a bungleloo. And—and I want to turn that Ringold girl off my island, I do!"

CHAPTER XIV

SOMETHING NEW IN RADIO

The Stanleys arrived at Station Island the next day, the doctor having arranged for a substitute preacher at the Roselawn Church for two Sundays. The bungalow they had arranged to occupy was one of the colony not far from the big house the Norwoods and their party were staying in.

Darry and Burd began to spend a good deal of their time on the yacht after that first day. Amy accused her brother of being afraid of a flank attack by Belle Ringold and Sally Moon, and he admitted that he had hoped to escape those two "troublesome kids" when he came to the island.

"I came here as the guest of little Hen Haney," he declared soberly. "And I don't wish to be annoyed by any girls older than she is."

But he did not say this within Henrietta's hearing. The little girl went around with a very long face indeed. She seemed to think that she was going to lose her island. Even Nell Stanley, who was a general comforter at most times, could not alleviate little Henrietta's woe.

With the coming of the Stanleys, however, Henrietta became less of a trial to Jessie. For Sally Stanley was just about Henrietta's age and the two children got along splendidly together.

Bob and Fred, those lively and ingenious youngsters, made their own friends among the boys of the bungalow colony. The three girls from Roselawn—Jessie, Amy, and Nell—found plenty to do and enjoyed themselves thoroughly during the next few days. Being all interested in radio they naturally spent sometime at Jessie's set. But unfortunately it did not work as well here as it had at home.

"And I do not know why," Jessie ruminated. "I have been studying up about it and the more I read the less I seem to know. There are so many different opinions about how an amateur set should be built. Do you know, sometimes I feel as though I should have an entirely different kind of outfit. There is a new super-regenerative circuit that is being talked about."

"But some people say it is not practicable for amateurs," broke in Nell. "I've read so, anyway."

"I should like to talk with some professional—some radio expert—about that," Jessie confessed. "If I had thought before we left home I would have spoken to Mr. Blair."

"You'll have to wait until you get back, then," said Amy promptly.

"Why?" cried Nell suddenly. "There must be experts over at that Government station."

"That is so," agreed Jessie, thoughtfully. "Do you suppose they would——"

"Let's go and see," urged Nell. "I'm crazy to see the inside of that station, anyway."

"It's wireless—like the little outfit aboard the Marigold," Amy suggested.

"But so much bigger," Jessie chimed in eagerly. "If they admit visitors, let's go."

Mr. Norwood found out about that particular point for the girls and reported that if they went over to the station in the late afternoon the operator on duty would be glad to show them "the works" and give them all the information in his power.

The three friends went alone, for the collegians were off fishing that day on the Marigold. They left the little girls in Mrs. Norwood's care and slipped away about four o'clock and walked to the station, which was some distance from the bungalow colony. They had to climb the stairs in the old shaft of the lighthouse to the wireless room. The room was half darkened and they heard the snapping of the spark, and even saw the faint blue flash of it when they came to the door.

The operator, with his head harness on, was busy at his set. Jessie, at least, had spent some time trying to learn the Morse code since talking the matter over with Darry on the yacht. But although the signals the operator received were in dots and dashes, she could not understand a single thing.

"I am afraid it will take us a long time to learn," she said to Amy, sighing. "We shall have to buy a regular telegraph set and learn in that way."

"I wish you wouldn't talk about learning anything!" cried her chum. "Vacation is slipping right away from us."

After a few moments the spark stopped snapping, the operator closed his switch and removed his harness. He wheeled around on the bench and welcomed them. He was really a very pleasant young man, and he explained many things about both the radio-telegraph and radio-telephone that the girls had not known before.

He was so friendly that Jessie ventured to ask him about the new super-regenerative circuit in which she was interested.

"Yes. I'm strong for that new thing," said the wireless operator, enthusiastically. "In the first place, it was invented by the man who originated the ordinary regenerative circuit so much in use at present, and also of the super-heterodyne circuit. I understand this new circuit permits a current amplification up to a million times, and all with three tubes. You know, to reach such a high mark with your ordinary regenerative circuit, many more tubes would be necessary."

"I understand that," said Jessie. "But can an amateur build and practically work this new circuit?"

"Why not? If you follow directions carefully. And with the new outfit a loop is just as effective an antenna as an outside aerial. They say, too, that to catch broadcasting for not more than twenty-five miles, not even a loop is needed, the circuits themselves acting as the absorbers of energy."

"I'm going to try it," declared Jessie, with more confidence. "But I feel that I understand so little about the various forms of radio, after all."

"You have nothing on me there," laughed the operator. "I am learning something new all the time. And sometimes I am astonished to find out how, after five years of work with it, I am really so ignorant."

The girls had a very interesting visit at the station; and from the operator Jessie and Amy gained some particular instruction about sending and receiving messages in the telegraph code. He received several messages from ships at sea while the girls remained in the station, and likewise relayed other messages received from inland stations both up and down the coast and to vessels far out at sea.

"It is a wonderful thing," said Nell, as the girls walked homeward. "I never realized before how great an influence wireless already was in commercial life. Why, how did the world ever get along without it before Marconi first thought of it?"

"How did the world ever get along without any other great invention?" demanded Amy. "The sewing machine, for instance. I've got to run up a seam in one of my sports skirts, for there is no tailor, they say, nearer than the hotel. I do wish a sewing machine had been included in the furnishings of your bungalow, Jess. I hate to sew by hand."

The boys had come in before the Roselawn girls returned for dinner, and they were very enthusiastic over a plan for taking a part of the bungalow crowd on an extended sailing trip. They had met Dr. Stanley walking the beaches, and he had expressed a desire to go to sea for a day or two, and at once Darry and Burd had conceived a plan for the young folks to be included.

"The doctor is a good enough chaperon," said Darry, with a laugh. "Nell shall come. Her Aunt Freda will be down to look after the children."

"And Henrietta?" asked Jessie, hesitatingly.

"For pity's sake!" cried Darry, in some impatience. "Don't be tied down to that kid all the time. You'd think you were a grandmother."

"Well, I like that!" exclaimed Jessie. "I'm not sure that I want to go on your old yacht, Darry Drew."

"Aw, Jess——"

"Well, I'll think about it," murmured Jessie, relenting.

CHAPTER XV

HENRIETTA IN DISGRACE

Darry and Burd seemed to have little time to spend ashore these days. They said that they had a lot to do to fix up the Marigold for the proposed trip seaward. But Amy accused them of being afraid of Belle Ringold and Sally Moon.

"Belle is determined that she shall get an invitation to sail aboard your yacht, Darry," teased his sister. "Don't forget that."

"Not if we see her first," responded Burd, promptly. "And don't you ring her in on us, for if you do we'll not let you aboard the Marigold either. How about it, Darry?"

"Good enough," agreed Amy's brother.

"Oh, I promise not to ring Belle Ringold in on you," giggled Amy.

"It is perfectly disgraceful how you boys teach these girls slang," Mrs. Drew remarked with a sigh.

"Why, Mother!" cried Darry, his eyes twinkling, "they teach it to us. You accuse Burd an me wrongfully. We couldn't tell these girls a single thing."

This was at breakfast at the Norwood bungalow. After breakfast the young folks separated. But Jessie and Amy had no complaint to make about the boys. They had their own interests. This day they had agreed to explore the island with Nell Stanley as far as the hotel grounds.

They took Henrietta and Sally Stanley along, and carried a picnic lunch. The older girls were rather curious to see the extent of "Henrietta's domain," as Amy called it. The pastures included in the Hackle Island Golf Club grounds covered all the middle of the island, and consisted of hills and dells, all "up-and-down-dilly," Amy observed, and from a distance, at least, seemed very attractive.

Of course, they could not go fast with the two smaller girls along, although Henrietta seemed tireless.

"But Sally ain't a tough one, like me," declared the little girl who thought she was going to own an island. She approved of Sally Stanley very much, because the minister's little girl was dainty, and kept her dresses clean, and was soft-spoken. "I got to run and holler once in a while or I thinks I'm choking," confessed Henrietta. "But your mamma, Miss Jessie, says I'll get over that after a while. She says I'll go to school and learn a lot and that maybe I'll be as nice as Sally some day."

"I hope you will," said Jessie warmly.

"That's hardly to be expected," Henrietta rejoined in her old-fashioned way. "Sally was born that way. But I always was a tough one."

"There is a good deal in that," sighed Jessie to the other Roselawn girls. "The poor little thing! She never did have a chance. But Momsy is already talking about sending her away to school to have her toned down and——"

"Suppose the Blairs won't hear to it?" suggested Amy.

"Leave it to Momsy to work things out her way," said Jessie, more gaily.

They soon left the sand dunes behind them and marched up over what the natives of the island called "the downs" to a scrubby pasture at the edge of the golf links. Crossing the links watchfully they only had to dodge a couple of times when the players called "Fore!" and so got safely past the various greens and reached the patch of wood between the club premises and the hotel grounds.

There was a spring here which they had been told about, and it was near enough noon for lunch to occupy an important place in their minds. They spent an hour here; but after that, much as she had eaten, Henrietta began to run around again. She could not keep still.

Her voice was suddenly stilled and she halted in the path and stood like a pointer flushing a covey of birds. The older girls were surprised. Amy drawled:

"What's the matter, Hen? You don't feel sick, do you?"

"I hear something," declared Henrietta, her freckled face clouding. "I hear somebody talk that I don't like."

"Who is that?" asked Nell.

"She makes me feel sick, all right," grumbled the little girl. "Oh, yes! It's her. And if she says again that she owns my island, I'll—I'll——"

"Belle Ringold!" exclaimed Amy, much amused. "Can't we go anywhere without Belle and Sally showing up?"

The two girls whom they all considered so unpleasant appeared at the top of the small hill and came down the path. They were rather absurdly dressed for an outing. Certainly their frocks would have looked better at dinner or at a dance than in the woods. And they strutted along as though they quite well knew they had on their very best furbelows.

"Oh, dear me! there's that awful child again," drawled Belle, before she saw the older girls sitting at the spring.

"She must be lost away up here," said Sally Moon, idly. "Say, kid, run get this folding cup filled at the spring."

"What for?" demanded Henrietta.

"Why, so I can drink from it, foolish!"

"You bring me a drink first," said the freckle-faced girl stoutly. "Nobody didn't make me your servant to run your errands—so now!"

"Listen to her!" laughed Belle. "She waits on Jess Norwood and Amy Drew hand and foot. Of course she is a servant."

"You ain't a servant when you wait on folks for love," declared Henrietta, quickly.

Amy clapped her hands together softly at this bit of philosophy. Jessie stood up so that the girls from the hotel could see her.

"Oh! Here's Jess Norwood now," cried Sally. "You might know!"

Little Henrietta was backing away from the two newcomers, but eyeing them with great disfavor. She suddenly demanded of Jessie:

"Is this spring on a part of my land, Miss Jessie?"

"It may be," said Amy, quickly answering before Jessie could do so. "Like enough all this grove is yours, Hen."

"Why," gasped Belle Ringold, "my father is just about to take possession of this place. He is going to have surveyors come on the island and survey it."

"This is my woods!" cried Henrietta. "It's my spring! You sha'n't even have a drink out of it—neither of you girls!"

"What nonsense!" drawled Belle. "Who will stop us, please?" and she came on down the path toward the spring.

The other girls had now got up. Jessie tried to reach out and seize Henrietta; but the latter was so angry that she jerked away. She stood before Belle and Sally with flashing eyes and her hands clenched tight.

"You go away! This is my woods and my spring! You sha'n't have a drink!"

"The child is crazy," said Belle, harshly. "Let me pass, you mean little thing!"

At that Henrietta stooped and caught up dirt in each grubby hand. It was a little damp where she stood, and the muck stuck to her palms. She shrieked hatred and defiance at Belle and, running forward, smeared the dirt all up and down the front of the rich girl's fine dress.

Belle shrieked quite as loudly as the angry Henrietta and threatened all manner of punishment. But she could not catch the freckled girl, who was as wriggly as an eel.

"I'll—I'll have you whipped! You ought to be spanked hard!" panted Belle Ringold. "And it is your fault, Jess Norwood. You egged her on."

"I did not," said Jessie, angrily.

But she was vexed with Henrietta, too. She ran after and caught the panting, sobbing little thing. She really was tempted to shake her.

"What do you mean, Henrietta Haney, by acting this way and talking so? Do you want to disgrace us all? For shame!"

"I don't talk no worse than the Ringold one," declared Henrietta.

Jessie tried a new tack. She said more quietly: "But you know better, Henrietta."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And perhaps she doesn't," ventured Jessie.

"Well—er—she's got money," pouted Henrietta. "Why doesn't she hire somebody to teach her better? You know I never did have any chance, Miss Jessie."

She felt she was in disgrace, however, and the older girls let her feel this without compunction. Belle was frightfully angry about her frock. She sputtered and threatened and called names that were not polite. Finally Jessie said:

"If you feel that way about it, Belle, send the dress to the cleaner's and then send the bill to my mother. That is all I can say about it. But I think you brought it on yourself by teasing Henrietta."

In spite of this speech to Belle, Henrietta felt that she was in disgrace as Jessie marched her away from the spring. Little Sally Stanley came to her other side and squeezed Henrietta's dirty hand in sympathy.

"Huh!" snuffled Henrietta. "It's too bad you've got the same name as that Moon girl, Sally. Why don't you ask the minister to change it for you? He christens folks, doesn't he?"

"Why, yes," murmured Sally, uncertainly. "But I was christened, you know, oh, years and years ago."

"That don't cut no ice," replied Henrietta, unconscious that her language was not all it ought to be. "You just have him do it over again. And don't be no 'Sally,' nor no more 'Belle.'"

CHAPTER XVI

"RADIO CONTROL"

Jessie Norwood had talked over the matter of the new super-regenerative circuit with her father and had got him interested in the idea of using one to improve their own radio receiving. It was not difficult to interest Mr. Norwood in it, for he had become a radio enthusiast like his daughter since the Roselawn girls had broken into the wireless game.

With the large party now in the Norwood's bungalow in Station Island, it was not convenient to use only the head-phones when the radio concerts were to be received out of the ether. The two-step amplifier Mr. Norwood had formerly bought did not always work well, especially, for some unknown reason, since they had come to the seashore.

In addition, the sounds through the horn seemed to be scratchy and harsh, a good deal like the sounds from a poor talking machine. From what Jessie had read, she understood that these harsh noises would be obviated if the super-regenerative circuit was put in. Her father had telegraphed for the material to build the super-regenerative and amplifier circuit, and the material came by express the morning after the picnic on which Henrietta had disgraced herself.

"We will try the thing here on the island," Mr. Norwood said to Jessie. "If it works here it will surely work back at Roselawn, for the temperature, or humidity, or something, is different there from what it is here. At least, so it seems to me, and the state of the air surely influences radio."

"Static," said Jessie, briefly, reading the instructions in the book.

Amy, of course, was quite as interested in the new invention as her chum; and Nell, too. But they were not so clear in their minds as was Jessie about what should be done in building the new set. Jessie was glad to have her father show so much interest, for he was eminently practical, and when the girls were uncertain how to proceed it was nice to have somebody like the lawyer to turn to.

He even let Mr. Drew and the two mothers go on to the golf course that day without him, while he gave his aid to the girls. The boys were cleaning up the yacht in preparation for the voyage they expected to make in a short time.

Nell's Aunt Freda had arrived that morning, so the minister's daughter did not have to worry at all about Bob and Fred and Sally.

"And to help out," Amy said, with a giggle, "Henrietta is invited over to the Stanley bungalow to play with little Sally."

"I guess Aunt Freda will get along all right with them," observed Nell, with some amusement. "But Fred pretty nearly floored her at the start. She says it takes her several hours to get 'acclimated' when she comes to our house."

"What did Fred say—or do?" asked Jessie, interested.

"There was something Aunt Freda advised him to do and he said he would—'to-morrow.'

"'Don't you know,'" she asked him, 'that "to-morrow never comes"?'

"'Gee! and to-morrow's my birthday,' grumbled Fred. 'Now I suppose I won't have any.'"

"What kids they are!" gasped Amy, when she had recovered from her laughter. "I don't know whether a younger brother is worse than an older brother or not. I've had my troubles with Darrington," and she sighed with mock seriousness.

"Ha!" exclaimed Jessie. "I guess he's had his troubles with you. Do you remember when you smeared your hands all up with chocolate cake and tried to wipe them clean on Darry's new trousers?"

Nell shouted with laughter at this revelation, but it did not trouble Amy Drew in the least.

"Yes," she admitted. "My taste in the art of dressing, you see, was well developed even at that early age. Those trousers, I remember, were of an atrocious pattern."

"Nonsense!" cried Jessie. "They were Darry's first long pants, and you were mad to think he was so much older than you that he could put on men's clothes."

"Dear me!" sighed Amy. "You make me out an awful creature, Jess Norwood. But, never mind. Darry has paid me up and to spare for that unladylike trick. He has been a trial—and is so yet. He doesn't know how to pick a decent necktie. His shirts—some of them—are so loud that you can see him coming clear across The Green. Why! they tell me that his shirts are as well known in New Haven, and almost as prominently mentioned by the natives, as the Hartley Memorial Hall; and almost nobody gets away from the City of Elms without being obliged to see that."

"What a reckless talker you are, Amy!" Jessie said, smiling. "And I will not hear you run Darry down. I think too much of him myself."

"Don't let him guess it," said the absent Darry's sister, with a grin. "It will spoil him—make him proud and hard to hold."

"That's a good one!" laughed Nell. "You think Darry can be as easily spoiled by praise as the Chinese servant Reverend tells about that he had in California. This was before I was born. Father and mother got a Coolie right at the dock. You could do that in those days. And John scarcely knew a word of English, not even the pidgin variety.

"But Reverend says that when John acquired a few English words he was so proud that there was no holding him. He asked the name of every new object he saw and mispronounced it usually in the most absurd manner. Once John found a sparrow's nest in the grapevine and shuffled into Reverend's study to tell him about it.

"'Is there anything in the nest yet, John?' Reverend asked him.

"'Yes,' the Chinaman declared, puffed up with his knowledge of the new language, 'Spallow alle samme got pups.'"

While they chattered and laughed the three girls were as busy as bees with the new radio arrangement. Amy said that Jessie kept them so hard at work that it did not seem at all as though they were "vacationing." It was good, healthy work for all.

"It does seem awfully quiet here without Hen," went on Amy, hammering on a board with a heavy hammer and making the big room where the radio set was, ring. "She keeps the place almost as tomb-like as a boiler shop—what?"

"You can make a little noise yourself," Jessie told her. "What's all the hammering for?"

"So things won't sound too tame. How are we getting on with the new circuit?"

"Why, Amy Drew! you just helped me place this vario-coupler. Didn't you know what you were doing?"

"Not a bit," confessed Amy. "You are away out of my depth, Jess. And don't try to tell me what it all means, that's a dear. I never can remember scientific terms."

"Put up the hammer," said Nell, laughing. "You are a confirmed knocker, anyway, Amy. But I admit I do not understand this tangle of wires."

They did not seek to disconnect the old regenerative set that day, for there was much of interest expected out of the ether before the day was over. One particular thing Jessie looked for, but she had said nothing about it to anybody save her very dearest chum, Amy, and the clergyman's daughter, Nell.

Two days before she had done some telephoning over the long-distance wire. Of course there was a cable to the mainland from Station Island, and Jessie had called up and interviewed Mark Stratford at Stratfordtown.

Mark was a college friend of Darry and Burd, but he was likewise a very good friend of the Roselawn girls and he had reason for being. As related in a previous volume, "The Radio Girls on the Program," Jessie and Amy had found a watch Mark had lost, and as it was a valuable watch and had been given him by his grandmother, Mark was very grateful.

Through his influence—to a degree—Jessie and Amy had got on the program at the Stratfordtown broadcasting station. And now Jessie had talked with the young man and arranged for a surprise by radio that was to come off that very evening at "bedtime story hour."

Henrietta and little Sally and Bob and Fred Stanley, as well as some of the other children of the bungalow colony, crowded into the house at that time to "listen in" on the Roselawn girls' instrument.

The amplifier worked all right that evening, and Jessie was very glad. The little folks arranged themselves on the chairs and settees with some little confusion while Jessie tuned the set to the Stratfordtown length of wave. There was some static, but after a little that disappeared and they waited for the announcement from the faraway station.

By and by, as Henrietta whispered, the radio began to "buzz." "Now we'll get it!" cried the little Dogtown girl. "I hope it is about the little boy with the rabbit ears that he could wiggle."

"S-sh!" commanded Jessie, making a gesture for silence.

And then out of the air came a deep voice:

"We have with us this evening, children, the Radio Man, who, just like Santa Claus, knows all our little shortcomings, as well as our virtues. Have you all been good boys and girls to-day? Don't all say 'Yes' at once. Better stop and think about it before you speak.

"Before the bedtime story," went on the voice out of the horn, "the Radio Man must tell some of you that you must take care, or you will get on the black list. Here is a little girl, for instance, who may be rich when she grows up. But she must have a care. People who grow up rich and own islands must be very nice."

"Oh! Oh! That's me!" gasped Henrietta. "How'd he know me?"

"So I have to warn Henrietta, the little girl I speak of, that there is a lot she must do if she wishes in time to enjoy the wealth which she expects."

At that the other children began to exclaim. It was Henrietta. They almost drowned out the first of the bedtime story with their excited voices.

"Well," exclaimed Henrietta, "I guess everybody knows about my owning this island, so that Ringold one needn't talk! But Miss Jessie's mother told me what I had got to do to deserve my island."

"What have you got to do?" asked Amy, curiously. "The Radio Man says you must be good."

"Miss Jessie's mother says I've got to make folks love me or I won't enjoy my island at all—so now. But," she added confidentially, "I don't believe I ever shall want that Ringold one and Sally Moon to love me. Do you s'pose that's nec-sary?"

After the children had gone the older girls discussed a point that Amy brought up regarding the incident. Of course, Amy was in fun, for she said:

"Listen! Didn't I read something about 'radio control' in one of our books, Jess? Well, there is an example of radio control—control of children. Henrietta is going to remember that she is on the Radio Man's list. She'll be good, all right!"

Mr. Norwood laughed. "How do we know what great developments may come within the next few years in the line of radio control? Already the control of an aeroplane has been tried, and proved successful. A submarine may be governed from the shore. The drive of a torpedo has already been successfully handled by wireless.

"In time, perhaps a farmer may sit before a keyboard in his office and manage tractors plowing and cultivating his fields. Ships of all descriptions will be managed by compass control. And automobiles——"

"I hope Bill Brewster learns to handle his red car by wireless," chuckled Amy. "It will then be less dangerous to himself and to his friends, if not to pedestrians," and this quaint idea amused all the Roselawn girls.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TEMPEST

Jessie, Amy, and Nell had spied, on their hike and picnic, an inlet in the shore of the island facing the mainland, on the sands of which were several fish houses and several rowboats and small sailboats that the girls were sure might be had for hire.

"We might have shipped our new canoe down here and had some fun," Amy said. "That bay is a wonderful place to sail in. Why, you can scarcely see the port on the other side of it. And the island defends it from the sea. It is as smooth as can be."

Nell was very fond of rowing, and she expressed a wish that they might go out in one of the open boats. She would row. So the three chums escaped the younger children the next afternoon and slipped over to the other side of the island, across the sand dunes.

They found an old fisherman who was perfectly willing to hire them a boat, and, really, it was not a bad boat, either. At least, it had been washed out and the seats were clean. The oars were rather heavier than Nell Stanley was used to.

"You need heavy oars on this bay, young lady," declared the boat-owner. "Nothing fancy does here. When a squall comes up——"

"Oh, but you don't think it looks like a squall this afternoon, do you?" Jessie interrupted.

"Dunno. Can't tell. Ain't nothing sartain about it," said the pessimistic old fellow. "Sometimes you get what you don't most expect on this bay. I been here, man and boy, all my life, and I give you my word I don't know nothing about the weather."

"Oh, come on!" exclaimed Amy, under her breath. "What a Job's comforter he is! Who ever heard of a fisherman before who didn't know all about the weather?"

"Maybe we had better not go far," Jessie, who was easily troubled, said hesitatingly.

"Come on," said Nell. "He just wants to keep us from going out far. He is afraid for his old tub of a boat."

She said this rather savagely, and Jessie thought it better to say nothing more of a doubtful nature, having two against her. Besides, the sky seemed quite clear and the bay was scarcely ruffled by the wind.

The old man sat and smoked and watched them push off from the landing without offering to help. He did not even offer to ship the rudder for them, although that was a clumsy operation. When Jessie and Amy had managed to secure it in place, while Nell settled herself at the oars, the old man shouted:

"That other thing in the bow is a anchor. You don't use that unless you want to stay hitched somewhere. Understand?"

"He must think we are very poor sailors," said Jessie.

"I feel like making a face at him—as Henrietta does," declared Amy. "I never saw such a cantankerous old man."

Nell braced her feet and set to work. She was an athletic girl and she loved exercise of all kind. But rowing, she admitted, was more to her taste than sweeping and scrubbing.

Amy steered. At least, she lounged in the stern with the lines across her lap. Jessie had taken her place in the bow, to balance the boat. They moved out from shore at a fine pace, and even Amy soon forgot the grouchy old fisherman.

There were not many boats on the bay that afternoon—not small boats, at least. The steamer that plied between the port and the hotel landing at the north of the island at regular hours passed in the distance. A catboat swooped near the girls after a time, and a flaxen-haired boy in it—a boy of about Darry Drew's age—shouted something to them.

"I suppose it is something saucy," declared Amy. "But I didn't hear what he said and sha'n't reply. I don't feel just like fighting with strange boys to-day."

Jessie was the first to see the voluminous clouds rising from the horizon; but she thought little of them. The descending sun began to wallow in them, and first the girls were in a patch of shadow, and then in the sunlight.

"Don't you want me to row some, Nell?" Jessie asked.

"I'm doing fine," declared the clergyman's daughter. "But—but I guess I am getting a blister. These old oars are heavy."

"We ought to have made him give us two pairs," complained Amy. "Then the two of you could row."

"Listen to her!" cried Jessie. "She would never think of taking a turn at them. Not Miss Drew!"

"Oh, I am the captain," declared Amy. "And the captain never does anything but steer."

They had rowed by this time well up toward the northerly end of the island. Hackle Island Hotel sprawled upon the bluff over their heads. It was a big place, and the grounds about it were attractive.

"I don't see Belle or Sally anywhere," drawled Amy. "And see! There aren't many bathers down on this beach."

"This is the still-water beach," explained Jessie. "I guess most of them like the surf bathing on the other side."

There were winding steps leading up the bluff to the hotel. Not many people were on these steps, but the seabirds were flying wildly about the steps and over the brow of the bluff.

"Wonder what is going on over there?" drawled Amy, who faced the island just then.

Nell stopped rowing to look at the incipient blister on her left palm. Jessie bent near to see it, too. Nobody was looking across the bay toward the mainland.

"You'd better let me take the oars," Jessie said. "You'll have all the skin off your hand."

"Why should you skin yours?" demanded Nell. "These old oars are heavy."

"How dark it is getting!" drawled Amy. "Even the daylight saving time ought not to be blamed for this."

Jessie looked up, startled. Over the mainland a black cloud billowed, and as she looked lightning whipped out of it and flashed for a moment like a searchlight.

"A thunderstorm is coming!" she cried. "We'd better turn back."

But when Nell looked up and saw the coming tempest she knew she could never row back to the inlet before the wind, at least, reached them.

"We'll go right ashore," she said with confidence.

"What do you say, Amy?" Jessie asked.

"Far be it from me to interfere," said the other Roselawn girl, carelessly, and without even turning around to look. "I'm in the boat and will go wherever the boat goes."

Nell, settling to the oars again with vigor, remarked:

"One thing sure, we don't want the boat overturned and have to follow it to the bottom. Oh! Hear that thunder, will you?"

Amy woke up at last. She twitched about in the stern and stared at the storm cloud. It was already raining over the port, and long streamers of rain were being driven by the rising wind out over the bay.

"Wonderful!" she murmured.

"Where are you going, Nell?" suddenly shrieked Jessie. "The boat is actually turning clear around!"

"Don't blame me!" gasped Nell. "I am pulling straight on, but that girl has twisted the rudder lines. Do see what you are about, Amy, and please be careful!"

"My goodness!" gasped the girl in the stern. "It's going to storm out here, too."

She frantically tried to untangle the rudder lines; but while she had been lying idly there, she had twisted them together in a rope, and she was unable to untwist them immediately. Meanwhile the thunder rolled nearer, the lightning flashed more sharply, and they heard the rain drumming on the surface of the water. Little froth-streaked waves leaped up about the boat and all three of the girls realized that they were in peril.

CHAPTER XVIII

FROM ONE THING TO ANOTHER

"Let 'em alone, Amy!" begged Jessie, from the bow. "You are only twisting the boat's head around and making it harder for Nell to row."

"I—could—do better—if the rudder was unshipped," declared Nell, pantingly.

Immediately Amy jerked the heavy rudder out of its sockets. Fortunately she had got the lines over her head before doing this, or she might have been carried overboard.

For the rudder was too much for Amy. The rising waves tore it out of her hands the instant it was loose, and away it went on a voyage of its own.

"There!" exclaimed Jessie, with exasperation. "What do you suppose that grouchy old man will say when we bring him back his boat without the rudder?"

"He won't say so much as he would if we didn't bring him back his boat at all," declared Amy. "I'll pay for the rudder."

Jessie felt that the situation was far too serious for Amy to speak so carelessly. She urged Nell to let her help with the oars; and, in truth, the other found handling the two oars with the rising waves cuffing them to and fro rather more than she had bargained for.

Jessie shipped the starboard oar in the bow and together she and Nell did their very best. But the wind swooped down upon them, tearing the tops from the waves and saturating the three girls with spray.

"I guess I know what that white-haired boy tried to tell us," gasped Amy, from the stern. "He must have seen this thunderstorm coming."

"All the other boats got ashore," panted Nell. "We were foolish not to see."

"Nobody on lookout—that's it!" groaned Amy. "Oh!"

A streak of lightning seemed to cross the sky, and the thunder followed almost instantly. Down came the rain—tempestuously. It drove over the water, flattening the waves for a little, then making the sea boil.

"Hurry up, girls!" wailed Amy. "Get ashore—do! I'm sopping wet."

Jessie and Nell had no breath with which to reply to her. They were pulling at the top of their strength. The shore was not far away in reality. But it seemed a long way to pull with those heavy oars.

The rain swept landward and drove everybody, even the few bathers, to cover. The shallow water was torn again into whitecaps and a lot of spray came inboard as Jessie and Nell tried their very best to reach the strand.

Amy could do nothing but encourage them. There was no way by which she might aid their escape from the tempest. One thing, she did nothing to hinder! Even she was in no mood for "making fun."

In fact, this tempest was an experience such as none of the three girls had seen before. Jessie and Nell were well-nigh breathless and their arms and shoulders began to ache.

"Let me exchange with one of you, Nell! Jess!" cried Amy, her voice half drowned by the noise of wind and rain.

"Stay where you are!" commanded Jessie, from the bow, as her chum started to come forward. "You might tip us over!"

"Sit down!" sang the cheerful Nell. "Sit down, you're rocking the boat!"

"But I want to help!" complained Amy.

"You did your helping when you got rid of that rudder," returned Nell, comfortingly. "Do be still, Amy Drew!"

"How can one be still in such a jerky, pitching boat?" gasped the other girl. "Do—do you think you can reach land, Jessie Norwood?"

"I've hopes of it," responded her chum. "It isn't very far."

"I wonder how far it is to—to land underneath the keel?" sputtered Amy.

"For pity's sake stop that!" cried Nell Stanley. "Don't suggest such gloomy and gruesome things."

"Well," grumbled Amy, "I believe it's the nearest land."

"I shouldn't be surprised," panted Jessie. "But don't talk about it, Amy."

The rain swept over and past the small boat in such heavy sheets that finally the girls could scarcely see the shore at all. Amy found something to do—and something of importance. Although not much water slopped into the boat over the sides, the rain itself began to fill the bottom. The water was soon ankle deep.

"Bail it! Bail it!" shouted Nell.

"Oh! is that what the tin dipper is for?" gasped Amy. "I—I thought it was to drink out of."

Afterward "Amy's drinking cup" made a joke, but just then nobody laughed at the girl's mistake. She set to work with vigor to bail out the boat, and kept it up "for hours and hours" she declared, though the others insisted it was "minutes and minutes."

At last they reached the strand.

One of the bathing house men ran out to help pull the bow of the boat up on the sands.

"Run along up to the hotel!" he cried. "There is no good shelter down here for you."

The moment they could do so the three girls leaped ashore. Thus relieved of their weight, the boat was the more easily dragged out of the reach of the waves, which now began to roll in madly. The lightning increased in its intensity, the thunder reverberated from the bluff. The tempest was at its height when they hastened to mount the winding wooden stair.

"Oh, my blister! Oh, my blister!" moaned Nell, as she climbed upward.

"Everything I've got on sticks to me like a twin sister," declared Amy Drew. "Oh, dear! How shall we ever get home in these soaked rags?"

"We must go to the hotel," cried Jessie. "Come on."

She was the first to reach the top of the stairs. There was a garden and lawn to cross to reach the veranda. As the rain was beating in from this direction none of the hotel guests was on this side of the house. The three wet girls ran as hard as they could for shelter.

Just as Jessie, leading the trio, came up the Veranda steps, she heard a loud and harsh voice exclaim:

"Well of all things! I'd like to know what you think you are doing here? You have no business at this hotel. Go away!"

Jessie almost stopped, and Amy and Nell ran into her.

"Oh, do go on!" cried Amy. "Let us get inside somewhere——"

"Well, I should say not!" broke out the harsh voice again, and the three Roselawn girls beheld Belle Ringold and Sally Moon confronting them on the piazza. "Just look at what wants to get into the hotel, Sally! Did you ever?"

"They look like beggars," laughed Sally. "The manager would give them marching orders in a hurry, I guess."

"Do let us in out of the rain," Jessie said faintly. She did not know but perhaps the hotel people would object to strangers coming inside. But Amy demanded:

"What do you think you have to say about it, Belle Ringold? Is this something more that you or your folks own? Do go along, Belle, and let us pass."

"Not much; you won't come in here!" declared Belle, setting herself squarely in their way. "No, you don't! That door's locked, anyway. It belongs to Mrs. Olliver's private suite—Mrs. Purdy Olliver, of New York. I am sure she won't want you bedrabbled objects hanging around her windows."

"Go around to the kitchen door," said Sally Moon, laughing. "That is where you look as though you belonged."

"Oh, that's good, Sally!" cried Belle. "Ex-act-ly! The kitchen door!"

At that moment another flash of lightning and burst of thunder made the two unpleasant girls from New Melford cringe and shriek aloud. They backed against the closed door Belle had mentioned as being the wealthy Mrs. Olliver's private entrance.

Amy and Nell screamed, too, and the three wet girls clung together for a moment. The rain came with a rush into the open porch, and if they could be more saturated than they were, this blast of rain would have done it.

"We have got to get under shelter!" shouted Jessie, and dragged her two friends farther into the veranda. Belle and Sally might have been mean enough to try to drive them back, but at this point somebody interfered.

A long window, like a door, opened and a lady looked out, shielding herself from the wind by holding the glass door.

"Girls! Girls!" she cried. "You will be drowned out there. Come right in."

"Fine!" gasped Amy, not at all under her breath. "Belle doesn't own the hotel, after all!"

"It's Mrs. Olliver!" exclaimed Sally Moon in a shrill voice, as she and Belle came out of retirement and likewise approached the open window.

"Come right in here," said the lady, cheerfully as Jessie and her friends approached. "You are three very plucky girls. I saw you out in your boat when the storm struck you. Come in and I'll have my maid find you something dry to put on."

"Oh, fine!" sighed Amy again.

The trio of storm-beaten girls hastened in out of the wind and rain; but when Belle and Sally would have followed, Mrs. Olliver stopped them firmly.

"Don't you belong in the hotel?" she asked. "Then go around to the main entrance if you wish to come in. You are at home."

She actually closed the French window—but gently—in the faces of the bold duo. Amy, at least, was vastly amused. She winked wickedly at Jessie and Nell Stanley.

"This will break Belle's heart," she whispered.

CHAPTER XIX

BOUND OUT

Jessie thought that the very wealthy Mrs. Purdy Olliver was no different from Momsy or Mrs. Drew or Nell's Aunt Freda. She was just polite and kind. Secretly the girls from Roselawn thought the lady was very different from Belle's mother and Mrs. Moon. Perhaps that fact was one reason why the unpleasant Belle Ringold had spoken in some awe of the New York woman.

She had a really wonderful suite at the Hackle Island Hotel, for she had furnished it herself and came here every year, she told her young visitors. There was a lovely big bath room with both a tub and a Roman shower.

"Though, you can believe me," said Amy, "I don't have any idea that many of the old Romans had baths like this. It was 'the great unwashed' that supported Cæsar. 'Roman bath' is only a name."

"Wrong! Not about Cæsar's crowd, but about the Romans in general as bathers," answered Jessie. "Read your Roman history, girl. Or if not that—and you won't—some historical novels."

"Humph!" sniffed Amy, but made no further reply.

The girls laughingly disrobed and tried the shower, while the maid dried their outer clothing, furnishing each of the guests with kimono or negligee. Then they came out into Mrs. Olliver's living room and took tea with her.

They did not get their own clothes back until nearly six o'clock, and saw nothing of Belle and Sally when they came out of the hotel. Perhaps that was because they left by Mrs. Olliver's private door and ran right down the steps to the beach where they had left the boat.

The kind woman had asked them to come and see her again, and was especially cordial when she knew that Jessie was the daughter of the Mrs. Norwood who had been chairman of the foundation fund committee of the Women's and Children's Hospital of New Melford.

"I think that idea of having a radio concert by which to raise funds for the hospital was unusually good," the New York woman said. "It was the first thing that interested me in radio-telephony. I mean to have a set put in here soon. There is a big one in the hotel foyer, but it does not work perfectly at all times."

"Dear me," said Nell, as the girls descended to the beach, "you run into radio fans everywhere, don't you? How interesting!"

The boat was all right, only half filled with water. The bathhouse man came and turned the craft over for them and emptied it. Jessie thanked and tipped him and he pushed them off. Jessie and Amy each took an oar and made Nell sit in the stern and nurse her blister.

"It really is something of a blister," Amy remarked, looking at it carefully.

"There's water in it already, and it hurts!" wailed the clergyman's daughter.

"I see the water," declared Amy. "It may be an ever-living spring there. You know, people have water on the brain and water on the knee; but seems to me a spring in your hand must be lots worse."

"You never will be serious," said Nell, half laughing. "If the blister was on your hand——"

"Don't say a word! I think I shall have one before we reach the landing," declared Amy. "And, girls, what do you suppose that grouchy old fisherman will say when he sees we lost his rudder?"

"He won't see that," replied Jessie.

"What! Why, listen to her!" gasped Amy. "Is she going to try to get away before he misses the rudder?"

"Not at all," returned her chum calmly, while Nell began to laugh. "It was you who lost the rudder, Amy Drew. Nell and I had nothing to do with that crime."

"Ouch!" cried Amy. "I wouldn't have lost it if it hadn't been for the thunderstorm coming down on us so suddenly. And that old fellow didn't warn us of any squall."

"He warned us that squalls were prevalent on the bay," replied Nell. "He said he knew nothing about the weather. And I guess he told the truth."

"There is a great lack of unanimity in this trio," complained Amy. "If I lost the rudder, didn't we all lose it?"

When they reached the inlet, however, the old fisherman was just as surprising as he had been in the first place.

"Don't blame me," he said when the girls came ashore. "I told you I didn't know anything about the weather. I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd lost the boat."

"We only lost a part of it," said Amy quickly. "The rudder."

"Well, it wasn't much good. I can find another around somewhere. Lucky to get the hull of the boat back, I am."

"You didn't get the whole of it back, I tell you," said Amy, soberly.

He blinked at her, and without even a smile, said:

"Oh! You mean that for a joke, do you? Well, I don't understand jokes any more than I do the weather. No, you needn't pay me for the rudder. 'Tain't nothing."

The trio had a good deal to talk about when they got home, but Darry and Burd came in at dinner with the news that the Marigold was all ready for sea and that they would get under way right after breakfast the next morning.

Dr. Stanley and his daughter and Jessie and Amy were to be the boys' guests on this trip, and the idea was to go along the coast as far as Boston and return. Mrs. Norwood had become used by this time to the boys going back and forth in the yacht and after her own voyage down to the island had forgotten her fears for the young folks.

"I am sure Darry will not expose the girls to danger," she said to her husband. "But I am glad Dr. Stanley is going with them. He has such good sense."

Henrietta wanted to go along. She did not see why she could not go on the yacht if "Miss Jessie and Miss Amy" were going. She might have whined a bit about it, if it had not been that she was reminded of the Radio Man.

"You want to look out," Amy advised her. "You know the Radio Man is watching you and like enough he'll tell everybody just how bad you are."

"Gee!" sighed Henrietta. "It's awful to be responsible for owning an island, ain't it?"

The girls were eager to be off in the morning and they scurried around and packed their overnight bags and discussed what they should wear for two hours before breakfast. Burd was not to be hurried at his morning meal.

"No knowing what we may get aboard ship," he grumbled. "If it comes up rough there may be no chance at all to eat properly."

"Now, Burd Alling!" exclaimed Amy. "How can you?"

"How can I eat? Perfectly. Got teeth and a palate for that enjoyment."

"But don't suggest that we may have bad weather. After that tempest yesterday——"

"You'll have no hotel to run to if we get squally weather," laughed her brother. "I think, however, that after that shower we should have clear weather for some time. Don't let the 'Burd Alling Blues' bother you."

"Anyway," said Jessie, scooping out her iced melon with some gusto, "we have a radio on board and we can send an S O S if we get into trouble, can't we?"

"Come to think of it," said Darry, "that old radio hasn't been working any too well. You will have to give it the once over, Jess, when you get aboard."

This made Jessie all the more eager to embark on the yacht. She was so much interested in radio that she wanted, as Amy said, to be "fooling with it all of the time!"

But when they got under way and the Marigold steamed out to sea there were so many other things to see and to be interested in that the girls forgot all about the radio for the time being, in the mere joy of being alive.

Darry had shipped a cook; but the boys had to do a good deal of the deck work to relieve the forecastle hands. Stoking the furnace to keep up steam was no small job. The engines of the Marigold were old and, as Skipper Pandrick said, "were hogs for steam." To tell the truth the boilers leaked and so did the cylinders. The boys had had trouble with the machinery ever since Darry had put the Marigold into commission. But the young owner did not want to go to the expense of getting new driving gear for the yacht. And, after all, the trouble did not seem to be serious.

The speed of the boat, however, was all the girls and other guests expected. The sea was smooth and blue, the wind was fair, the sun shone warmly, and altogether it was a charming day. Nobody expected trouble when everything was so calm and blissful.

But some time before evening haze gathered along the sealine and hid the main shore and Hackle Island, too. Nobody expected a sea spell, however, from this mild warning—not even Skipper Pandrick.

"This is a time of light airs, if unsettled," he said. "Thunderstorms ashore don't often bother ships at sea. There's lightning in them clouds without a doubt, but like enough we won't know anything about it."

It was true the Marigold's company was not disturbed in the least during the evening. After dinner the heavy mist drove them below and they played games, turned on the talking machine, and sang songs until bedtime. Sometime in the night Jessie woke up enough to realize that there was an unfamiliar noise near.

"Do you hear it?" she demanded, poking Amy in the berth over her head.

"Hear what?" snapped Amy. "I do wish you would let me sleep. I was a thousand miles deep in it. What's the noise?"

"Why," explained Jessie, puzzled, "it sounds like a cow."

"Cow? Huh! I hope it's a contented cow, I do, or else the milk may not be good for your coffee."

"She doesn't sound contented," murmured Jessie. "Listen!"

The silence outside the port-light was shattered by a mournful, stuttering sound. Nell Stanley sat up suddenly on the couch across the stateroom and blinked her eyes.

"Oh, mercy!" she gasped. "There must be a terrible fog."

"Fog?" squealed Amy. "And Jessie was telling me there was a cow aboard. Is that the foghorn? Well, make up your mind, Jess, you'll get no milk from that animal."

CHAPTER XX

SOMETHING SERIOUS

The three girls did not sleep much after that. The grumbling, stuttering notes of the foot-power horn seemed to fill all the air about the Marigold. Darry told them at breakfast that he used this old-fashioned horn on the yacht because it took too much steam if they used the regular horn.

"This is a great old tub," complained Burd, who had spent the previous hour at the device. "She makes only steam enough to blow the horn when you stop the engines. Great! Great!"

"You'd kick if you were going to be hung," observed his chum.

"Might as well be hung as sentenced to the treadmill. I suppose I have to go back and step on the tail of that horn after breakfast?"

"You'll take your turn if the fog does not lift."

"What could be sweeter!" grumbled Burd, and fell to on the viands before him with a just appreciation of the time vouchsafed him for the meal. Burd's appetite never failed.

The fog, however, lifted. But it was a gray day and the girls looked upon the vessels which appeared out of the mist about them with an interest which was half fearful.

"Suppose one of those had run into us?" suggested Jessie. "And there is a great liner off yonder. Why, if that had bumped us we must have been sunk——"

"Without trace," finished Amy, briskly. "The old cow's mooing did some good, I guess, Jess," and she chuckled.

She had told the boys about her chum thinking there must be a cow aboard in the night, and of course they all teased Jessie a good deal about it. She laughed with them at herself, however. Jessie Norwood was no spoil-sport.

The Marigold steamed into the east all that afternoon. But the weather did not improve. The hopes of a fair trip were gradually dissipated, and even the skipper looked about the horizon and shook his head.

"Seems as though there was plenty of wind coming, Mr. Darrington," he said to the owner of the yacht. "If these friends of yours are easily made sea-sick, we'd better get into shelter somewhere."

"Where'll we go?" demanded Darry. "Here we are off Montauk."

"With the direction the wind is going to blow when she gets going, we'd better run for the New Harbor at Block Island and get in through the breech there. It'll be calm as a millpond, once we're inside."

When Darry asked the others, however, the consensus of opinion was that they keep on for Boston.

"Can't we take the inside passage—go through the Cape Cod Canal?" asked Dr. Stanley. "That should eliminate all danger."

"Oh, there's no danger," Darry said. "The yacht is as seaworthy as can be. But I don't want any of you to be uncomfortable."

"I'm a good sailor," declared Nell.

"You know Jess and I are used to the water," Amy hastened to say. "Let us go on, Darry."

But the wind sprang up a little later and began to blow fitfully. The skipper considered it safer to keep well out to sea. Inshore waters are often dangerous even for a craft of as light draught as the Marigold.

The crowd sat on deck, keeping as much as possible in the shelter of the deckhouse, and were just as jolly as though there was no such thing on the whole ocean as a storm. Dr. Stanley told them several of his funny stories, and amused the young folks immensely.

In the midst of the general hilarity Nell went below for something. She was gone for some minutes and Jessie, at least, began to wonder where she was when she saw Nell's hand beckoning to her from an open stateroom window. Jessie got up and moved toward the place, wondering what the doctor's daughter had discovered that so excited her.

"What is it, Nell?" Jess whispered.

"Come down here—do!" exclaimed the other girl, her tone half muffled.

"What is the matter?" Jessie exclaimed, in wonder.

But she slipped around to the other side of the cabin, faced the gale, and reached the companionway. She darted down, being careful to shut tight the slide behind her. Already the waves were buffeting the small yacht and spray was dashing in over the weather rail.

Jessie found some difficulty in keeping her feet in the close cabin. It was so dark outside that the interior of the yacht was gloomy. She groped her way to their stateroom, which was the biggest aboard.

"What is the matter, Nell?" demanded Jessie, pushing open the door and peering in.

Nell Stanley's face was white. She stood by the open window. At Jessie's appearance she began to sob and tremble.

"I—I'm so frightened, Jess!" she gasped.

"Why, you silly! I thought you said you were a good sailor?"

"It isn't that," Nell told her. "Don't—don't you smell it?"

"Don't I smell what?"

"Come in and shut the door. Now smell—smell hard!"

Jessie began to giggle. "What do you mean? Why! I see a little haze of smoke by the window. Do I, or don't I?"

"I opened the window to let it out. But—but it comes more and more, Jessie," stammered the clergyman's daughter. "I believe the yacht is on fire, Jessie!"

"Oh! Don't say that!" murmured Jessie Norwood, suddenly frightened herself.

"When I came in the room was full of smoke and—don't you smell it?"

"It doesn't smell very nice," admitted her friend. "Where does the smoke come from? Where can it come from?"

"It must come from below—from the hold under us."

"But what can be burning? This is not a cargo boat," said the puzzled Jessie. "We don't want to frighten them all, especially if it amounts to nothing."

"I know. That is why I called you first," Nell declared, anxiously. "I—I wasn't sure."

"Well, I am sure of one thing," said Jessie confidently.

"What is that?"

"This is a very serious thing if it is serious. We must tell Skipper Pandrick at once. Let him decide what is to be done."

"You wouldn't tell Darry?"

"The skipper is responsible. We won't frighten the boys if we don't need to," and Jessie tried to open the door again. "Come on. Don't stay here and get asphyxiated."

"It is all right with the window open," said Nell.

She turned to follow her chum and saw Jessie tugging at the door-knob and stopped, amazed. The other girl used both hands, but could not turn the knob. She tugged with all her strength.

"Why, Jessie Norwood! what is the matter with it?" whispered Nell, anxiously.

"The mean old thing won't open! It's a spring lock. How did it get locked this way, do you suppose?"

"You slammed it when you came in, Jess," Nell said. "But I had no idea that it could be locked that way. Especially from the outside. Oh, dear! Shall I shout for one of the boys? Shall I?"

"Don't!" gasped Jessie, still struggling with the door-knob. "Don't you know if one of them comes here and sees this smoke, everybody will know it?"

"They'll have to know it pretty soon," said Nell. "The smoke is coming in all the time, Jess."

Jessie could see that well enough. She shrank from creating a panic aboard the yacht, realizing fully what a terrible thing a fire at sea can be. If this hovering fog of smoke meant nothing serious, their outcry for help at the stateroom window would create trouble—maybe serious trouble. Jessie had the right idea, if she could but carry it out—to tell the sailing master of the yacht, and only him.

The brass knob seemed as firmly fixed in place as though it had never been moved since it came from the shop. Jessie, at last, came away from it. She peered out of the small window. If she could only catch the skipper's eye!

But she could not. At that moment there was not a soul in sight from the window. She saw sea and sky, and that was all.

"Oh dear, Jess!" murmured Nell Stanley, at last giving way to fear. "What shall we do? We'll be burned up in here!"

"Don't talk so, Nell!" commanded Jessie. "Do you want to scare me to death?"

"It's enough to scare anybody to death," proclaimed the minister's daughter. "I'm going to scream for father."

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" her friend declared. "Shrieking about this will do no good, and may do harm. Can't you see——"

"Not much, with all this smoke in my eyes," grumbled Nell.

"Don't be a goose! If we yell, everybody will come running, and will get excited when they see the smoke."

"But, Jess," Nell said very sensibly, "all the time we delay the fire is gathering headway."

"If it is a fire."

"Goodness me! Where there's so much smoke there must be fire. How you talk!"

"I don't want to be shown up as a 'fraid cat and a killjoy," cried Jessie. "The boys are always laughing at us, anyway, because we get scared at little things—mice, and falling overboard, and a puff of wind. I am deadly sick of hearing: 'Isn't that just like a girl?' So there!"

"Well, for pity's sake!" gasped the clergyman's daughter. "That is just like a girl! Afraid of what boys will say of one! Not me!"

"Girls ought to be just as fearless as boys, and have as much initiative. Now, Nell Stanley, suppose Darry and Burd were shut up in this stateroom under these circumstances. What do you suppose they would do?"

Nell laughed aloud, serious as the situation was. "I guess Burd would put his head out of that window and bawl for help."

"Darry wouldn't," declared Jessie, firmly. "He would know what to do. He would realize that it would not do to start a panic."

"But if the door has been locked on us?"

"Darry would know what to do with that old lock. He'd—he'd find a way. Find out what the matter with it was."

Jessie sprang at the door again. She stooped down and looked at the under side of the brass lock. Then she uttered a shrill squeal of delight.

"What is it now?" gasped Nell.

"I've got it! There is a snap here that holds the knob so you can't turn it! I must have snapped it when I came in!" She jerked the door open and ran. "Come on, Nell!"

"Well, of all things!" gasped her friend.

But she followed her friend out of the stateroom. They ran as well as they could through the cabin and got out upon the open deck. Skipper Pandrick, in glistening oilskins and sou'wester was far aft with his glasses to his eyes. He was watching a dark spot upon the stormy horizon that might have been steamer smoke, or a gathering storm cloud.

The girls ran up to him, but Jessie pulled Nell's sleeve to admonish her to say nothing that might be overheard by the other passengers.

"What's doing, young ladies?" asked the skipper, curiously, seeing their flushed and excited faces.

"Will—will you come below—to our stateroom—for a moment, Mr. Pandrick?" stammered Jessie. "There is something we want to show you. It is really something serious. Please come below at once."

CHAPTER XXI

WORK FOR ALL

The skipper looked rather queerly at the two excited girls, but he went below with them without further objection. In fact, Skipper Pandrick was a man of very few words: he proved this when Nell opened the stateroom door and he saw the smoke swirling about the apartment.

"I reckon you girls ain't been smoking in here," he said grimly. "Then I reckon that smoke comes from below."

"Is the ship really on fire?" gasped Jessie.

"Something's afire, sure as you're a foot high," said the skipper vigorously, and stormed out of the stateroom and out of the cabin.

There was a hatch in the main deck amidships. He called two of the men and had it raised. The passengers as yet had no idea that anything was wrong, for Jessie and Nell kept away from them.

But they watched what the skipper did. He had brought an electric pocket torch from below and he flashed this before him as he descended the iron ladder into the hold. Almost at once, however, a whiff of smoke rose through the open hatchway.

"Glory be, Tom!" said one sailor to his mate. "What do you make of that?"

"You can't make nothing of smoke, but smoke," returned the other man. "It's just as useless as a pig's squeal is to the butcher."

But Jessie believed that the incident called for no humor. If there was a fire below——