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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Campfire Girls on Station Island, by
+Margaret Penrose
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Campfire Girls on Station Island
+       or, The Wireless from the Steam Yacht
+
+
+Author: Margaret Penrose
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2011  [eBook #36130]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS ON STATION
+ISLAND***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank, Juliet Sutherland, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND
+
+or
+
+The Wireless from the Steam Yacht
+
+by
+
+MARGARET PENROSE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
+Publishers
+
+Copyright by
+The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
+
+Printed in U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   CHAPTER                                  PAGE
+        I. "O-Be-Joyful" Henrietta             1
+       II. A Puzzling Question                 9
+      III. A Flare-Up                         17
+       IV. Uncertainties                      26
+        V. Into Trouble and Out               36
+       VI. Changed Plans                      47
+      VII. Forecasts                          56
+     VIII. Aboard the "Marigold"              63
+       IX. Gossip Out of the Ether            70
+        X. Island Adventures                  77
+       XI. Trouble                            84
+      XII. A Double Race                      91
+     XIII. More Than One Adventure            98
+      XIV. Something New in Radio            107
+       XV. Henrietta in Disgrace             114
+      XVI. "Radio Control"                   122
+     XVII. The Tempest                       132
+    XVIII. From One Thing to Another         139
+      XIX. Bound Out                         147
+       XX. Something Serious                 156
+      XXI. Work for All                      166
+     XXII. A Radio Call That Failed          172
+    XXIII. Only Hope                         180
+     XXIV. The Mysterious Message            189
+      XXV. Saved by Radio                    196
+
+
+
+
+THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--"O-BE-JOYFUL" HENRIETTA
+
+
+Jessie Norwood, gaily excited, came bounding into her sitting room
+waving a slit envelope over her sunny head, her face alight. She wore a
+pretty silk slip-on, a sports skirt, and silk hose and oxfords that her
+chum, Amy Drew, pronounced "the very swellest of the swell."
+
+Beside Amy in the sitting room was Nell Stanley, busy with sewing in her
+lap. The two visitors looked up in some surprise at Jessie's boisterous
+entrance, for usually she was the demurest of creatures.
+
+"What's happened to the family now, Jess?" asked Amy, tossing back her
+hair. "Who has written you a billet-doux?"
+
+"Nobody has written to me," confessed Jessie. "But just think, girls!
+Here is another five dollars by mail for the hospital fund."
+
+Jessie had been acting as her mother's secretary of late, and Mrs.
+Norwood was at the head of the committee that had in charge the raising
+of the foundation fund for the New Melford Women's and Children's
+Hospital.
+
+"That radio concert panned out wonderfully," Amy said. "If I'd done it
+all myself it could have been no better," and she grinned elfishly.
+
+"We did a lot to help," said Nell seriously. "And I think it was just
+wonderful, our singing into the broadcasting horns."
+
+"This five dollars," said Jessie, soberly, "was contributed by girls who
+earned the money themselves for the hospital. That is why I am saving
+the envelope and letter. I am going to write them and congratulate them
+for mother, when I get time."
+
+"Never was such a success as that radio concert," Amy said proudly. "I
+have received no public resolution of thanks for suggesting it----"
+
+"I am not sure that you suggested it any more than the rest of us,"
+laughed Jessie.
+
+"I like that!"
+
+"I feel that I had a share in it. The Reverend says it was the most
+successful money-raising affair he ever had anything to do with,"
+laughed Nell. "And he, as a minister, has had a broad experience." The
+motherless Nell Stanley, young as she was, was the very efficient head
+of the household in the parsonage. She always spoke affectionately of
+her father as "the Reverend."
+
+"Yes. It is a week now, and the money continues to come in," Jessie
+agreed. "But now that the excitement is over----"
+
+"We should look for more excitement," said Amy promptly. "Excitement is
+the breath of Life. Peace is stagnation. The world moves, and all that.
+If we get into a rut we are soon ready for the Old Lady's Home over
+beyond Chester."
+
+"I'm sure," returned Jessie, a little hotly, "we are always doing
+something, Amy. We do not stagnate."
+
+"Sure!" scoffed her chum, in continued vigor of speech. "We go swizzing
+along like a snail! 'Fast' is the name for us--tied _fast_ to a post.
+Molasses running up hill in January is about our natural pace here in
+Roselawn."
+
+Nell burst into gay laughter. "Go on! Keep it up! Your metaphors are
+wonderfully apt, Miss Drew. Do tell us what we are to do to get into
+high and show a little speed?"
+
+"Well, now, for instance," said Amy promptly, her face glowing suddenly
+with excitement, "I have been waiting for somebody to suggest what we
+are going to do the rest of the summer. But thus far nobody has said a
+thing about it."
+
+"Well, Reverend has his vacation next month. You know that," said Nell
+slowly and quite seriously. "It is a problem how we can all go away. And
+I am not sure that it is right that we should all tag after him. He
+ought to have a rest from Fred and Bob and Sally and me."
+
+Jessie smiled at the minister's daughter appreciatively. "I wonder if
+_you_ ought not to have a rest away from the family, Nell?"
+
+"Hear! Hear!" cried Amy Drew.
+
+"Don't be foolish," laughed Nell Stanley. "I should worry my head off if
+I did not have Sally with me, anyway. I think we'd better go up to the
+farm where we went last year."
+
+"'Farm' doesn't spell anything for me," said Amy, tossing her head.
+"Cows and crickets, horses and grasshoppers, haystacks and hicks!"
+
+"But we could have our radio along," Jessie said quietly. "I could
+disconnect this one"--pointing to her receiving set by the window--"and we
+might carry it along. It is easy enough to string the antenna."
+
+"O-oh!" groaned her chum. "She calls it easy! And I pretty nearly
+strained my back in two distinct places helping fix those wires after
+Mark Stratford's old aeroplane tore them down."
+
+"Well, you want some excitement, you say," said Jessie composedly. She
+went to the radio instrument, sat down before it, adjusted a set of the
+earphones, and opened the switch. "I wonder what is going on at this
+time," she murmured.
+
+Amy suddenly cocked her head to listen, although it could not be that
+she heard what came through the ether.
+
+"Listen!" she cried.
+
+"What under the sun is that?" demanded the clergyman's daughter, in
+amazement.
+
+Jessie murmured at the radio receiver:
+
+"Don't make so much noise, girls. I can't hear myself think, let alone
+what might come over the air-waves."
+
+"Hear that!" shrieked Amy, jumping up. "That is no radio message,
+believe me! It comes from no broadcasting station. Listen, girls!"
+
+She raised the screen at a window and leaned out. Jessie, removing the
+tabs from her ears, likewise gained some understanding of what was going
+on outside. A shrill voice was shrieking:
+
+"Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! I got the most wonderful thing to tell you.
+Oh, Miss Jessie!"
+
+"For pity's sake!" murmured Jessie.
+
+"Isn't that little Hen from Dogtown?" asked Nell Stanley.
+
+"That is exactly who it is," agreed Amy, starting for the door. "Little
+Hen is one live wire. 'O-Be-Joyful' Henrietta is never lukewarm. There
+is always something doing with that child."
+
+"Do you suppose she can be in trouble?" asked Jessie, worriedly.
+
+"If she is, I guarantee it will be something funny," replied Amy,
+whisking out of the room.
+
+"Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! I want to tell you!" repeated the shrill
+voice from the front of the Norwood house.
+
+"Come on, Jessie," said Nell, dropping her work and starting, too. "The
+child evidently wants you."
+
+The others followed Amy Drew down to the porch. The Norwood house where
+Jessie, an only child, lived with her mother and her father, a lawyer
+who had his office in New York, was a large dwelling even for Roselawn,
+which was a district of fine houses forming a part of the town of New
+Melford. The house was set in the middle of large grounds. Roses were
+everywhere--beds and beds of them. At one side was the boathouse and
+landing at the head of Lake Mononset. At the foot of the front lawn was
+Bonwit Boulevard, across which stood the house where Amy Drew lived with
+her father, Wilbur Drew, also a New York lawyer, and her mother and her
+brother Darrington.
+
+But it was that which stood directly before the gateway of the Norwood
+place which attracted the gaze of the three girls. A little old basket
+phaeton, drawn by a fat and sleepy looking brown-and-white pony, and
+driven by a grinning boy in overalls and with bare feet, made an object
+quite odd enough to stare at. The little girl sitting so very straight
+in the phaeton, and holding a green parasol over her head, was bound to
+attract the amused attention of any on-looker.
+
+"Oh, look at little Hen!" gasped Amy, who was ahead.
+
+"And Montmorency Shannon," agreed Jessie. "Don't laugh, girls! You'll
+hurt their feelings."
+
+"Then I'll have to shut my eyes," declared Amy. "That parasol! And those
+freckles! They look green under it. Dear me, Nell, did you ever see such
+funny children in your life as those Dogtown kids?"
+
+Jessie ran down the steps and the path to the street. When the freckled
+child saw her coming she stood up and waved the parasol at the Roselawn
+girl.
+
+Henrietta Haney was a child in whom the two Roselawn girls had become
+much interested while she had lived in the Dogtown district of New
+Melford with Mrs. Foley and her family. Montmorency Shannon was a
+red-haired urchin from the same poor quarters, and he and Henrietta were
+the best of friends.
+
+"Oh, Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! What d'you think? I'm rich!"
+
+"She certainly is rich," choked Amy, following her chum with Nell
+Stanley. "She's a scream."
+
+"What do you mean--that you are rich, Henrietta?" Jessie asked, smiling
+at her little protege.
+
+"I tell you, I am rich. Or, I am goin' to be. I own an island and
+everything. And there's bungleloos on it, and fishing, and a golf
+course, and everything. I am rich."
+
+"What can the child mean?" asked Jessie Norwood, looking back at her
+friends. "She sounds as though she believed it was actually so."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--A PUZZLING QUESTION
+
+
+Little Henrietta Haney, with her green parasol and her freckles, came
+stumbling out of the low phaeton, so eager to tell Jessie the news that
+excited her that she could scarcely make herself understood at all. She
+fairly stuttered.
+
+"I'm rich! I got an island and everything!" she crowed, over and over
+again. Then she saw Amy Drew's delighted countenance and she added:
+"Don't you laugh, Miss Amy, or I won't let you go to my island at all.
+And there's radio there."
+
+"For pity's sake, Henrietta!" cried Jessie. "Where is this island?"
+
+"Where would it be? Out in the water, of course. There's water all
+around it," declared the freckle-faced child in vigorous language.
+"Don't you s'pose I know where an island ought to be?"
+
+At that Amy Drew burst into laughter. In fact, Jessie Norwood's chum
+found it very difficult on most occasions to be sober when there was any
+possibility of seeing an occasion for laughter. She found amusement in
+almost everything that happened.
+
+But that made her no less helpful to Jessie when the latter had gained
+her first interest in radio telephony. Whatever these two Roselawn girls
+did, they did together. If Jessie planned to establish a radio set, Amy
+Drew was bound to assist in the actual stringing of the antenna and in
+the other work connected therewith. They always worked hand in hand.
+
+In the first volume of this series, entitled "The Radio Girls of
+Roselawn," the chums and their friends fell in with a wealth of
+adventures, and one of the most interesting of those adventures was
+connected with little Henrietta Haney, whom Amy had just now called
+"O-Be-Joyful" Henrietta.
+
+The more fortunate girls had been able to assist Henrietta, and finally
+had found her cousin, Bertha Blair, with whom little Henrietta now
+lived. By the aid of radio telephony, too, Jessie and Amy and their
+friends were able to help in several charitable causes, including that
+of the building of the new hospital.
+
+In the second volume, "The Radio Girls on the Program," the friends had
+the chance to speak and sing at the Stratfordtown broadcasting station.
+It was an opportunity toward which they had long looked forward, and
+that exciting day they were not likely soon to forget.
+
+A week had passed, and during that time Jessie knew that little
+Henrietta had been taken to Stratfordtown by her Cousin Bertha, where
+they were to live with Bertha's uncle, who was the superintendent of the
+Stratford Electric Company's sending station. The appearance of the
+wildly excited little girl here in Roselawn on this occasion was,
+therefore, a surprise.
+
+Jessie Norwood seized hold of Henrietta by the shoulders and halted her
+wild career of dancing. She looked at Montmorency Shannon accusingly and
+asked:
+
+"Do you know what she is talking about?"
+
+"Sure, I do."
+
+"Well, what does she mean?"
+
+"She's been talking like that ever since I picked her up. This is
+Cabbage-head Tony's pony. You know, he sells vegetables down on the edge
+of town. Spotted Snake----"
+
+"Don't call Henrietta that!" cried Jessie, reprovingly.
+
+"Well, she gave the name to herself when she played being a witch,"
+declared the Shannon boy defensively. "Anyway, Hen came down to Dogtown
+last evening and hired me to drive her over here this morning."
+
+"And when I get some of my money that's coming to me with that island,"
+broke in Henrietta, "I'll buy Montmorency an automobile to drive me
+around in. This old pony is too slow--a lot too slow!"
+
+"Listen to that!" crowed Amy, in delight.
+
+"But do tell us about the island, child," urged Nell Stanley, likewise
+interested.
+
+"A man came to Cousin Bertha's house, where we live with her uncle.
+_His_ name is Blair, too; it isn't Haney. Well, this man said: 'Are you
+Padriac Haney's little girl?' And I told him yes, that I wasn't grown up
+yet like Bertha. And so he asked a lot of questions of Mr. Blair. They
+was questions about my father and where he was married to my mother, and
+where I was born, and all that."
+
+"But where does the island come in?" demanded Amy.
+
+"Now, don't you fuss me all up, Miss Amy," admonished the child. "Where
+was I at!"
+
+"You was at the Norwood place. I brought you," said young Shannon.
+
+"Don't you think I know _that_?" demanded the little girl scornfully.
+"Well, it's about Padriac Haney's great uncle," she hastened to say.
+"Padriac was my father's name and his great uncle--I suppose that means
+that he was awful big--p'r'aps like that fat man in the circus we saw.
+But his name was Padriac too, and he left all his money and islands and
+golf courses to my father. So it is coming to me."
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Nell Stanley. "Did you ever hear such a jumbled-up
+affair?"
+
+But Montmorency Shannon nodded solemnly. "Guess it's so. Mrs. Foley was
+telling my mother something about it. And Spot--I mean, Hen, must have
+fallen heiress to money, for she give me a whole half dollar to drive
+her over here," and his grin appeared again.
+
+"What I want to know is the name of the island, child?" demanded Amy,
+recovering from her laughter.
+
+"Well, it's got a name all right," said Henrietta. "It is Station
+Island. And there's a hotel on it. But that hotel don't belong to me.
+And the radio station don't belong to me."
+
+"O-oh! A radio station!" repeated Jessie. "That sounds awfully
+interesting. I wonder where it is!"
+
+"But the golf course belongs to me, and some bungleloos," added the
+child, mispronouncing the word with her usual emphasis. "And we are
+going out to this island to spend the summer--Bertha and me. Mrs. Blair
+says we can. And she will go, too. The man that knows about it has told
+the Blairs how to get there and--and--I invite you, Miss Jessie, and you,
+Miss Amy, to come out on Station Island and visit us. Oh, we'll have
+fun!"
+
+"That sounds better than any old farm," cried Amy, gaily. "I accept,
+Hen, on the spot. You can count on me."
+
+"If it is all right so that we can go, I will promise to visit you,
+dear," Jessie agreed. "But, you know, we really will have to learn more
+about it."
+
+"Cousin Bertha will tell you," said the freckle-faced child, eagerly. "I
+run away to come down here to the Foleys, so as to tell you first. You
+are the very first folks I have ever invited to come to live on my
+island."
+
+"Ain't you going to let me come, Spot--I mean, Hen?" asked Monty Shannon,
+who sat sidewise on the seat and was paying very little attention to the
+pony.
+
+As a matter of fact, the pony belonging to the vegetable vender was so
+old and sedate that one would scarcely think it necessary to watch him.
+But at this very moment a red car, traveling at a pace much over the
+legal speed on a public highway, came dashing around the turn just below
+the Norwood house. It took the turn on two wheels, and as it swerved
+dangerously toward the curb where the pony stood, its rear wheels
+skidded. "Look out!" shrieked Amy. "That car is out of control! Look,
+Jess!"
+
+Her chum, by looking at it, nor the observation of any other bystander,
+could scarcely avert the disaster that Amy Drew feared. But she was so
+excited that she scarcely knew what she shouted. And her mad gestures
+and actions utterly amazed Jessie.
+
+"Have you got Saint Vitus's dance, Amy Drew?" Jessie demanded.
+
+The red, low-hung car wabbled several times back and forth across the
+oiled driveway. They saw a hatless young fellow in front behind the
+wheel. In the narrow tonneau were two girls, and if they were not
+exactly frightened they did not look happy.
+
+Nell Stanley cried: "It's Bill Brewster's racing car; and he's got Belle
+and Sally with him."
+
+"Belle and Sally!" shrieked Amy.
+
+Belle Ringold and her follower, Sally Moon, were not much older than Amy
+and Jessie, but they were overbearing and insolent and had made
+themselves obnoxious to many of their schoolmates. Wishing to appear
+grown up, and wishing, above all things, to attract Amy's brother Darry
+and Darry's chum, Burd Alling, and feeling that in some way the two
+Roselawn chums interfered in this design, they were especially
+unpleasant in their behavior toward them. Sometimes Belle and Sally had
+been able to make the Roselawn girls feel unhappy by their haughty
+speech and what Amy called their "snippy ways." Just now, however,
+circumstances forbade the two unpleasant girls annoying anybody.
+
+The others had identified the reckless driver and his passengers. At
+least, all had recognized the party save Montmorency Shannon. He just
+managed to jump out of the phaeton in time. The pony was still asleep
+when the rear of the skidding red car crashed against the phaeton and
+crushed it into a wreck across the curbstone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--A FLARE-UP
+
+
+The red car stopped before it completely overturned. Then, when the
+exhaust was shut off, the screams of the two girls in the back seat
+could be heard. But nobody shouted any louder than Montmorency Shannon.
+
+The red-haired boy had leaped from the phaeton and had seized the pony
+by the bit. Otherwise the surprised animal might have set off for home,
+Amy said, "on a perfectly apoplectic run."
+
+The little animal stood shaking and pawing, nothing but the shafts and
+whiffle-tree remaining attached to it by the harness. The rear wheels of
+the racing car were entangled in the phaeton and it was slewed across
+the road.
+
+"Now see what you've done! Now see what you've done!" one of the girls
+in the car was saying, over and over.
+
+"Well, I couldn't help it, Belle," whined the reckless young Brewster.
+"You and Sally Moon aren't hurt. And you asked to ride with me, anyway."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean you, Bill!" exclaimed the girl behind him. "But that
+horrid boy with his pony carriage! What business had he to get in the
+way?"
+
+"Hey! 'Tain't my carriage, you Ringold girl," declared Monty Shannon.
+"It's Cabbage-head Tony's. He'll sue your father for this, Bill
+Brewster. And you come near killing me and the pony."
+
+"I don't see how you came to be standing just there," complained the
+driver of the red car. "You might have been on the other side of the
+drive."
+
+"He ought to have been!" declared Belle Ringold promptly. "He was headed
+the wrong way. I'll testify for you, Bill. Of course he was headed
+wrong."
+
+"Why, you're another!" cried Monty. "If I'd been headed the wrong way
+you'd have smashed the pony instead of the carriage."
+
+"Never mind what they say, Monty," Jessie Norwood put in quietly. "There
+are three of us here who saw the collision, and we can testify to the
+truth."
+
+"And me. I seen it," added Henrietta eagerly. "Don't forget that Spotted
+Snake, the Witch, seen it all. If you big girls tell stories about Monty
+and that pony, you'll wish you hadn't--now you see!" and she began making
+funny gestures with her hands and writhing her features into perfectly
+frightful contortions.
+
+"Henrietta!" commanded Jessie Norwood, yet having hard work, like Nell
+and Amy, to keep from laughing at the freckle-faced child. "Henrietta,
+stop that! Don't you know that is not a polite way--nor a nice way--to
+act?"
+
+"Why, Miss Jessie, they won't know that," complained little Henrietta.
+"They are never nice or polite."
+
+At this statement Monty Shannon burst out laughing, too. The red-haired
+boy could not be long of serious mind.
+
+"Never you mind, Brewster," he said to the unfortunate driver of the red
+car, who was notorious for getting into trouble. "Never mind; we ain't
+killed. And your father can pay Cabbage-head Tony all right. It won't
+break him."
+
+"You impudent thing!" exclaimed Belle Ringold, who was a very proud and
+unpleasant girl. "You are always making trouble for people, Montmorency
+Shannon. It was you who would not finish stringing our radio antenna at
+the Carter place and so helped spoil our picnic."
+
+"He didn't! He didn't!" ejaculated Henrietta, dancing up and down in her
+excitement. "It was me--Spotted Snake! I brought down the curse of bad
+weather on your old picnic--the witch's curse. I'm the one that brought
+thunder and lightning and rain to spoil your fun. And I'll do it again."
+
+She was so excited that Jessie could not silence her. Sally Moon burst
+into a scornful laugh, but her chum, Belle, said, fanning herself as she
+sat in the stalled car:
+
+"Don't give them any attention. These Roselawn girls are just as low as
+the Dogtown kids. Thank goodness, Sally, we will get away from them all
+for the rest of the summer."
+
+"Your satisfaction will only be equaled by ours," laughed Amy Drew.
+
+"I don't know whether you will get rid of me or not, Belle," said Nell
+Stanley composedly. "If you mean to go to Hackle Island--"
+
+"Father has engaged the handsomest suite at the hotel there," Belle
+broke in. "I fancy Doctor Stanley will not feel like taking you all
+there, Nellie. It is very expensive."
+
+"Oh, no, if we go we sha'n't be able to live at the hotel," confessed
+the clergyman's daughter. "But the children will get the benefit of the
+sea air."
+
+"Oh!" murmured Amy. "Hackle Island is a nice place."
+
+"But it ain't as nice as mine!" Henrietta suddenly broke in. "My island
+is the best. And I wouldn't let those girls on it--not on my part of it."
+
+"What is that ridiculous child talking about?" demanded Belle
+scornfully, while Bill Brewster continued to crawl about under his car
+to discover if possible what had happened to it. "What does she mean?"
+
+"I got an island, and everything," announced Henrietta. "I'm going to be
+just as rich as you are, but I won't be so mean."
+
+"Then you would better begin by not talking meanly," advised Jessie,
+admonishingly.
+
+"Well," sniffed Henrietta, "I haven't got to let 'em on my island if I
+don't want to, have I?"
+
+"You needn't fret," laughed Sally Moon. "Your island is like your
+witch's curse. All in your mind."
+
+"Is that so?" flared out little Henrietta. "Your old picnic was just
+spoiled by my bad weather, wasn't it? Well, then, wait till you try to
+get on my island," and she shook a threatening head, and even her green
+parasol, in her earnestness.
+
+Sally laughed again scornfully. But Belle flounced out of the
+automobile.
+
+"Come on!" she exclaimed. "Bill will never get this car fixed."
+
+"Oh, yes, I will, Belle," came Bill's muffled voice from under the car.
+"I always do."
+
+"Well, who wants to wait all day for you to repair it, and then ride
+home with a fellow all smeared up with oil and soot? Come on, Sally."
+
+Sally Moon meekly followed. That was how she kept in Belle Ringold's
+good graces. You had to do everything Belle said, and do just as she
+did, or you could not be friends with her.
+
+"Well," Monty Shannon drawled, "as far as I think, you both can go. I
+won't weep none. But Bill's going to weep when he tells his father about
+this busted carriage."
+
+"All Bill has to do is to deny it," snapped Belle Ringold. "Nobody would
+believe you against our testimony."
+
+"Nobody but the judge," laughed Amy. "Don't be such a goose, Belle. We
+will all testify for Mr. Cabbage-head Tony."
+
+Bill crawled out from under his automobile as the two girls who had been
+passengers walked away. He was just as much smutted as Belle said he
+would be. But he looked after her and her friend without betraying any
+dissatisfaction.
+
+"It's all right," he said to Monty. "I guess you couldn't help being in
+the way. This car does go wrong once in a while. You can jump in the car
+and I'll take you home and tell the chap that owns the pony how it
+happened. He can come to my father and get paid."
+
+"Not much," said the Dogtown boy. "I'll have to lead the pony. But you
+can take Hen back to Dogtown."
+
+"Is it safe?" asked Jessie, for Henrietta had started for the red car at
+once. She was crazy about automobiles.
+
+"If it goes bad again I can get out," said the child importantly. "I
+won't wait for it to turn topsy-turvy."
+
+"She will be all right," said Bill Brewster gloomily. "Father will make
+me pay for this carriage out of my own money. I'm rather glad we are
+going where I can't use the machine for the rest of the summer. It eats
+up all my pocket money."
+
+"Where are your folks going, Billy?" asked Jessie politely.
+
+"Oh, we always go to Hackle Island."
+
+"Everybody is going to an island," laughed Amy. "I guess we'll have to
+accept Hen's invitation and go to her island, Jess."
+
+"It's a lot better island than that one those girls are going to,"
+repeated Henrietta, with confidence, climbing into the red car.
+
+When the latter was gone, and Monty Shannon was out of sight, leading
+the brown and white pony, the three Roselawn girls discussed little
+Henrietta's story of her sudden wealth, and particularly of her
+possession of Station Island, wherever that was.
+
+"Of course, we won't understand the rights of the matter till we see
+Bertha," said Jessie. "She must know all about it."
+
+"I wonder where Station Island is situated?" Amy observed. "Let's hunt
+an atlas---- Oh, no, we won't! Here is something better."
+
+"Something better than an atlas?" laughed Nell. "A walking geography?"
+
+"You said it," rejoined Amy. "Papa knows all about such things. I can't
+even remember how New Melford is bounded; but you'd think he had been
+all around the world, and walked every step of the way."
+
+"And you never will know, Amy Drew, if you ask somebody every time you
+want to know anything and never stop to work the thing out yourself,"
+admonished Jessie.
+
+"Oh, piffle!" exclaimed the careless Amy. "What's the use?"
+
+Mr. Drew was just coming out of his own grounds across the boulevard,
+and his daughter hailed him.
+
+"Want to ask you an important question, papa," cried Amy, running to
+meet him and hanging to his arm.
+
+"Ahem! If you expect advice, I expect a retainer," said the lawyer
+soberly.
+
+"Nothing like that! I know you lawyers. I am going to wait to see if
+your advice is worth anything," declared his gay daughter. "Now, listen!
+Did you ever hear of Station Island?"
+
+"I have just heard of it," responded the gentleman promptly.
+
+"Oh! Don't be so dreadfully smart," said Amy. "I know I am telling
+you----"
+
+"Wrong. I had just heard of it to-day--before you mentioned it," returned
+her father. "But I have known of it for a good many years, under another
+name."
+
+"Then you do know where Station Island is, Mr. Drew?" cried Jessie,
+eagerly. "We do so want to know."
+
+"That is the new name they have given the place since the big radio
+station was established there. It is really Hackle Island, girls, and
+has been known by that name since our great-grandparents' days."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--UNCERTAINTIES
+
+
+"It is lucky Henrietta went away before papa came," observed Amy, after
+they had discussed the strange matter at some length. "She certainly
+would have been mad to learn that Belle and Sally were likely to visit
+what she calls her island, without any invitation from her."
+
+"What do you suppose it all means?" asked Jessie.
+
+"She must have heard some mixed-up account of an island that belonged to
+her family," Nell said, "and got it twisted. I can't see it any other
+way. But I must go home now, girls. The Reverend and the children need
+looking after by this time. Good-bye."
+
+Mr. Drew did not explain until evening about his previous knowledge of
+the island in question. Then he came over to smoke his after-dinner
+cigar on the Norwood's porch, and he and Jessie's father discussed the
+matter within the hearing of their two very much interested daughters.
+When their fathers did not object, Jessie and Amy often "listened in" on
+business conversations, and this one was certainly important to the
+minds of the two chums.
+
+"Did Blair telephone you to-day again about that matter?" Mr. Norwood
+asked his neighbor.
+
+"No. It was Mr. Stratford himself. Takes an interest in Blair's affairs,
+you know."
+
+"It really concerns that Bertha Blair who was of so much value to me in
+the Ellison will case. You remember?" observed Mr. Norwood.
+
+"And it concerns this little freckle-faced child the girls have had
+around here so much. Actually, if the thing pans out the way it looks,
+Norwood, that child has got something coming to her."
+
+"She has a good deal coming to her if she can prove she is the daughter
+of Padriac Haney," said Jessie's father, with vigor.
+
+"You are inclined to take the matter up?"
+
+"I am. I'll do all I can. Blair has no money to risk----"
+
+"He won't need any," said Mr. Drew, quite as decisively. "If you can
+spend your time on it, so can I. It won't break us, Norwood, to help the
+child."
+
+"Not at all," agreed Mr. Norwood, generously.
+
+"But is it really true, Daddy, that Hackle Island belongs to little
+Henrietta and Bertha?" asked Jessie.
+
+"A good part of it, apparently. All of the middle of the island," he
+returned. "The Government owns Sable Point where the old lighthouse
+stands and where the radio station is now established. That has been a
+government reservation for years. At the other end is the Hackle Island
+Hotel, always popular with a certain class of moneyed people."
+
+"I have been there," said Mr. Drew, nodding. "But there is a bunch of
+bungalows in between----"
+
+"By the way," interposed Mr. Norwood, "my wife said something about
+taking one of those for a month or two. I have the tentative offer of
+one."
+
+"O-oh!" gasped Amy, clasping her hands.
+
+Her father laughed outright. "See," he said to the other lawyer. "You
+are going to have a guest, if you go there. I can see that."
+
+"The bungalow is big enough for the girls and their friends," admitted
+Jessie's father.
+
+"That beats the farm!" cried Amy to Jessie.
+
+"It will be nice. And we can take Henrietta and Bertha along."
+
+"They are going in any case, I hear from Blair," said Mr. Norwood
+briskly. "His wife will take them. There is an old farmhouse that
+belongs to the Haney estate. You see, a part of the bungalow colony and
+the Club golf course are included in the old Haney place. The real
+estate men who exploited the island a few years ago did not trouble
+themselves to get clear title to the land. They made their bit and got
+out. Now there are two parties laying claim to the middle of the
+island."
+
+"Oh, dear!" cried Jessie. "Then it isn't sure that little Henrietta will
+get her island? Too bad!"
+
+"Personally I am pretty sure that she will," said Mr. Norwood, with
+conviction. "But it will cause a court fight. There is another claimant,
+as I say."
+
+"You are right," agreed Mr. Drew. "And he is a fighter. Ringold never
+gives up a thing until he has to."
+
+"Goodness!" breathed Amy. "Not Belle's father?"
+
+"It is the New Melford Ringold," said Mr. Drew. "His claim is based upon
+an old note that the original Padriac Haney gave some money-lender.
+Ringold bought the paper along with a lot of other fishy documents. You
+know, he has always been a note shaver."
+
+"I know something about that," said Mr. Norwood, grimly. "Don't worry
+too much about it. Ringold may have a lot of money, but he won't spend
+too much to try to make good a bad claim. He doesn't throw a sprat to
+catch a herring; he would only risk a sprat for whale bait," and he
+laughed.
+
+However, the two girls had heard quite enough to yield food for chatter
+for some time to come. Jessie had kept close watch of the time by her
+wrist-watch. She now beckoned her chum, and they ran indoors and up the
+stairs to Jessie's sitting-room.
+
+"It is almost time for the concert from Stratfordtown," Jessie said.
+"And Bertha telephoned me yesterday that she hoped to sing to-night."
+
+"Lucky girl!" said Amy, sighing. "It's nice to have an uncle who bosses
+a broadcasting station. But, never mind, Jess, we had fun the time we
+were on the program. Say! the boys will be home to-morrow."
+
+"No! Do you mean it?"
+
+"Papa got a wireless. The _Marigold_ now has a real radio telegraph
+sending and receiving set. Darry says it is great. But, of course, you
+and I can't get anything from them because we do not know Morse."
+
+"Let's learn!" exclaimed Jessie, excitedly.
+
+"Sometimes when you get your set tuned wrong you hear some of the code.
+But the telegraph wave-length is much, much longer than the phone
+lengths. Guess you'd have a job listening in for anything Darry and Burd
+Ailing would send from that old yacht."
+
+"We can learn the Morse alphabet, just the same, can't we?" demanded her
+chum.
+
+"Now, there you go again!" complained Amy. "Always suggesting something
+that is work. I don't want to have to learn a single thing until we go
+back to school in the fall. Believe me!"
+
+Her emphasis only made Jessie laugh. She adjusted the crystal detector,
+or cat's whisker, as the girls called it, and then began to tune the
+coil until, with the tabs at her ears, she could hear a voice rising out
+of the void, nearer and nearer, until it seemed speaking directly in her
+ear:
+
+"With which announcement we begin our evening's entertainment from the
+Stratfordtown Station. The first number on the program being----"
+
+"Do you hear that? It is Mr. Blair himself," whispered Amy eagerly. "And
+he says----"
+
+Jessie held up her hand for silence as the superintendent of the
+broadcasting station at Stratfordtown went on to announce, "Miss Bertha
+Blair, who will sing 'Will o' the Wisp,' Mr. Angler being at the piano.
+I thank you."
+
+The piano prelude came to the ears of the Roselawn girls almost
+instantly. Jessie and Amy smiled at each other. They were proud to think
+that they had something to do with Bertha's becoming a favorite on the
+Stratfordtown programs, and likewise that their interest in the girl
+first served to call the superintendent's attention to her. In "The
+Roselawn Girls on the Program" is told of Bertha's first meeting with
+her uncle who had never before seen her.
+
+They listened to the hour's program and then tuned the receiver to get
+what was being broadcasted from a city station--a talk on economics that
+interested to a degree even the two high-school girls. For frivolous as
+Amy usually appeared to be, she was a good scholar and, like Jessie,
+stood well in her classes.
+
+There was not much but a desire for fun in Amy's mind the next morning,
+however, when she ran across the boulevard to the Norwood place. It was
+right after breakfast, and she wore her middy blouse and short skirt,
+with canvas ties on her feet. She trilled for Jessie under the
+radio-room windows:
+
+"You-oo! You-oo! 'Mary Ann! My Mary Ann! I'll meet you on the corner!'
+Come-on-out!"
+
+Jessie appeared from the breakfast room, and Momsy, as Jessie always
+called her mother, looked out, too.
+
+"What have you girls on your minds for this morning?" she asked.
+
+"Our new canoe, Mrs. Norwood. You know, we gave the old one to those
+Dogtown youngsters, and our new one has never been christened yet."
+
+"Shall I bring a hat?" asked Jessie, hesitatingly.
+
+"What for? To bail out the canoe? Bill says it is perfectly sound and
+safe," laughed Amy.
+
+"You are getting wee freckles on your nose, Jessie," said Mrs. Norwood.
+
+"Why worry?" demanded Amy. "You can never get as many as Hen wears--and
+her nose isn't as big as yours."
+
+"It is by good luck, not good management, that you do not freckle, Amy
+Drew," declared her chum. "I'll take the shade hat."
+
+"Why not a sunbonnet?" scoffed Amy.
+
+But Jessie laughed and ran out with her hat. It floated behind her, held
+by the two strings, as she raced her chum down to the boat landing. The
+Norwood boathouse sheltered several different craft, among others a
+motor-boat that Amy's brother, Darrington Drew, owned. But Darry and his
+chum, Burd Alling, had lost their interest in the _Water Thrush_ since
+they had been allowed to put into commission, and navigate themselves,
+the steam-yacht _Marigold_, which was a legacy to Darry from an uncle
+now deceased.
+
+The girls got the new canoe out without assistance from the gardener or
+his helper. They were thoroughly capable out-of-door girls. They had
+erected the antenna for Jessie's radio set without any help. Both were
+good boatmen--"if a girl can be a man," to quote Amy--and they could
+handle the _Water Thrush_ as well as the canoe.
+
+They launched and paddled out from the shore in perfect form. The sun
+was scorching, but there was a tempering breeze. It was therefore cooler
+out toward the middle of the lake than inshore. The glare of the sun on
+the water troubled even the thoughtless Amy.
+
+"Oh, aren't you the wise little owl, Jess Norwood!" she cried. "To think
+of wearing a sun-hat! And here am I with nothing to shelter me from the
+torrid rays. I am going to burn and peel and look horrid--I know I shall!
+I'll not be fit to go to Hackle Island--if we go."
+
+"Oh, we're going, all right!"
+
+"You're mighty certain, from the way you talk. Has it been really
+settled? 'There's many a slip' and all that, you know."
+
+"Father asked Momsy about it at breakfast before he went to town, and
+she said she had quite made up her mind," Jessie said. "He will make the
+arrangements with the owner of the house."
+
+"Oh, goody! A bungalow?" cried Amy.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How big, dear? Can the boys come?"
+
+"Of course. There are fourteen rooms. It is a big place. We will shut up
+the house here and send down most of the serving people ahead. We shall
+have at least one good month of salt air."
+
+"Hooray!" cried Amy, swinging her paddle recklessly. "And I've got just
+the most scrumptious idea, Jess. I'll tell you----"
+
+But something unexpected happened just then that quite drove out of Amy
+Drew's mind the idea she had to impart to her chum. She brought the
+paddle she had waved down with an awful smack on the water. The spray
+spattered all about. Jessie flung herself back to escape some of the
+inwash, and by so doing her gaze struck upon something on the surface of
+the lake, far ahead.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" she shrieked. "What is that, Amy? Somebody is drowning!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--INTO TROUBLE AND OUT
+
+
+Amy Drew sat up in the canoe as high as she could and stared ahead.
+Jessie's observation suggested trouble; but Amy almost immediately burst
+out laughing.
+
+"'Drowning!'" she repeated. "Why, Jess Norwood, you know that you
+couldn't drown those Dogtown kids. And if that isn't some of them--Monty
+Shannon, and the Costello twins, and the rest of them--I'm much
+mistaken."
+
+"But see those barrels and tubs and what-all!" gasped her more serious
+friend. "Look there! It's Henrietta!"
+
+The fleet of strange barges that Jessie had first spied included, it
+seemed, almost every sort of craft that could be improvised. A rainwater
+barrel led the procession of "boats," and Montmorency Shannon was in
+that, paddling with some kind of paddle that he wielded with no little
+skill.
+
+There were two wooden washtubs in which the Costello twins voyaged. One
+was much lower in the water than the other, giving evidence of having
+shipped more water than its mate. In a water-trough that had been
+filched from somebody's barnyard was little Henrietta and Charlie Foley.
+
+"They will be overboard!" exclaimed Jessie, anxiously. "Drive ahead,
+Amy--do!"
+
+The wind was blowing directly in their faces and from the direction of
+the Dogtown landing, where the flotilla had evidently embarked. The tubs
+spun around and around, the half-barrel in which Monty Shannon sat tried
+to perform the same gyrations, but Henrietta and the Foley boy blundered
+ahead. It was plain to Jessie's mind that the reckless children could
+not have sailed in the other direction had they wished to do so.
+
+"What do you come out here for?" she shrieked when the canoe drew near.
+
+"Oh, Miss Jessie, we are going to the Carter place," sang out Henrietta.
+
+"But the Carter place is down the lake, not up!" exclaimed the
+exasperated Jessie.
+
+"Yes. But the wind shifted," said Henrietta.
+
+"Where is your big canoe?" demanded Amy, who could scarcely paddle from
+laughter, in spite of the evident danger the children were in.
+
+"That is what we started after," said Montmorency Shannon, his red head
+sticking out of the barrel like a full-blown hollyhock. "It got away in
+the night, or somebody let it go, and we saw it away down by the Carter
+place. So--so we thought we'd go after it."
+
+"And I warrant your mothers don't know what you are doing," Jessie said
+sternly.
+
+"Oh, they will!" cried Henrietta, virtuously.
+
+"When they miss the washtubs," put in Amy, with laughter.
+
+"When we tell 'em," corrected little Henrietta. "And we always tell 'em
+everything we do."
+
+"I see. After it is all over," Jessie commented.
+
+"We-ell," said Henrietta, pouting, "we can't tell 'em what we have done
+before we do it, can we? For we never know ourselves."
+
+"You certainly cannot beat that for logic," declared Amy. She drove the
+head of the canoe to the tub of the nearest Costello twin. "Get in here
+carefully, Micky. You are going down."
+
+"That's 'cause Aloysius always gets the best tub. _He_ ain't sinking
+none," said Michael Costello, scowling at his twin.
+
+"Quick!" commanded Amy, and the disgruntled Costello swarmed over the
+side of the canoe. "We can take in one more. Who is the nearest
+drowned?"
+
+"I'm sitting in half a foot of water," confessed the red-haired Shannon,
+grinning.
+
+"A little soaking will do _you_ good. I can guess who suggested this
+crazy venture," Jessie said. "Come, Henrietta."
+
+"I need her to trim ship!" cried Charlie Foley.
+
+"What do you want to trim your ship with--red, white and blue?" demanded
+Amy. "If that trough sinks I know you can swim, Charlie."
+
+The crowd would have had some difficulty in getting back to shore with
+the wind blowing as freshly as it did if the girls had not come along
+and, in relays, helped them all back.
+
+"What Mrs. Shannon will say when she sees her two washtubs floating off
+like that, I don't know," sighed Henrietta, after they were all ashore.
+
+"One of 'em's sunk, so she can't see it," Micky Costello said calmly.
+"Maybe the other will go down. Don't you big girls say anything and
+maybe she won't find it out."
+
+Jessie and Amy had headed for Dogtown in the first place without any
+expectation of playing a life-saving part. Jessie thought they ought to
+see Mrs. Foley, who was fleshy and easy of disposition, and ask her
+about Henrietta's visit. So they accompanied the freckle-faced little
+girl to the Foley house.
+
+"I ain't telling 'em all they can come to visit my island, Miss Jessie,"
+said the little girl. "But of course, the Foleys could come. Mrs. Blair
+and Bertha wouldn't mind just them, of course. There's only Mrs. Foley
+and Charlie and Billy and the baby and three more boys and--and--well,
+that's all, only Mr. Foley. He wouldn't want to come."
+
+"You would better be sure of your island, and just how much you own of
+it, Hen," advised Amy Drew. "It may not be big enough to hold everybody
+you want to invite."
+
+"Why, Miss Amy, it's a awful big island," declared little Henrietta.
+"It's got a whole golf link on it. I heard Mr. Blair say so."
+
+The "bulgy" Mrs. Foley welcomed the Roselawn girls with her usual
+copiousness. Of course, she had the youngest Foley in her lap, and the
+housework was "at sixes and sevens," since little Henrietta had been at
+Stratfordtown for a week.
+
+"How I'm going to git used, young ladies, to havin' that child away is
+more than I can say. 'Tis a great mistake I have all boys for childers.
+There is nothing like a smart girl around the house."
+
+Jessie, very curious, asked the woman what she knew about Henrietta's
+wonderful story of wealth.
+
+"Sure, I've always expected it would come to her some day," declared
+Mrs. Foley. "Her mother, who was a good neighbor of mine before we moved
+out here to the lake, said Hen's father come of rich folks. They used to
+drive their own carriage. That was before automobiles come in so
+plenteous."
+
+"Did Bertha ever say anything about it, Mrs. Foley?"
+
+"Not much. 'Tis Hen will be the rich wan. Oh, yes. And glad I am if the
+child is about to come into her own. She's no business to be running
+down here every chance she gets. I had himself telephone to Bertha when
+he went to town this morning, and it is likely she will be here after
+the child. Hen's as wild as a hawk."
+
+Bertha Blair, in fact, appeared in a hired car before Jessie and Amy
+were ready to return in their canoe to Roselawn. She was quite as
+excited as Henrietta had been about the strange fortune that promised to
+come into their lives. Bertha could tell the chums from Roselawn many
+more particulars of the Padriac Haney property.
+
+"If little Henrietta will only be good and not be so wild and learn her
+lessons and mind what she's told," Bertha said seriously, "maybe she
+will have money and an island--or part of one, anyway. But she does not
+behave very well. She is as wild as a March hare."
+
+Little Henrietta looked serious for her; but Mrs. Foley took her part at
+once.
+
+"Sure don't be expectin' too much of the child at wance, Bertha. She's
+run as wild as the wind itself here. She's fought and played with these
+Dogtown kids since she was able to toddle around. What would ye expect?"
+
+"But she must learn," declared the older girl. "Mrs. Blair won't take us
+to the island this summer if she is not good."
+
+"Then I'll go myself," announced Henrietta. "It's my island, ain't it?
+Who has a better right there?"
+
+Jessie took a hand at this point, shaking her head gravely at the
+freckled little girl.
+
+"Do you suppose, Henrietta Haney, that your friends--like Mrs. Foley or
+Mrs. Blair, or even Amy and I--will want to come to your island to see
+you if you are not a good girl?"
+
+"Say, if I get rich can't I do like I want to--like other rich folks?"
+
+"You most certainly cannot. Rich people, if they are to be loved, must
+be even more careful in their conduct than poor folks."
+
+"We-ell," confessed the freckled little girl frankly, "I'd rather be
+rich than be loved. If I can't be both _easy_, I'll be rich."
+
+"Such amazing worldliness!" sighed Amy, raising her hands in mock
+horror.
+
+But Jessie Norwood truly wished the little girl to be nice. Poor little
+Henrietta, however, had much to unlearn. She chattered continually about
+the island she owned and the riches she was to enjoy. The smaller
+children of Dogtown followed her--and the green parasol--about as though
+they were enchanted.
+
+"'Tis a witch she certainly is," declared Mrs. Foley. "She's bewitched
+them all, so she has. But I'm lost widout her, meself. When a woman has
+six--and them all boys--and a man that drinks----"
+
+This statement of her personal affairs had been so often heard by the
+three girls that they all tried to sidetrack Mrs. Foley's complaint. It
+was Jessie, however, who advanced a really good reason for getting out
+of the Foley house.
+
+"I promised Monty Shannon I would look at his radio set," she said,
+jumping up. "You will excuse us for a little, Mrs. Foley? You are not
+going back to Stratfordtown at once, Bertha?"
+
+"Before long. I have only hired the car for the forenoon. The man has
+another job this afternoon. And I must find that Henrietta again," for
+the freckle-faced little girl was as lively, so Amy said, as a
+water-bug--"one of those skimmery things with long legs that dart along
+the surface of the water."
+
+The trio went out and across the cinder-covered yard to the Shannon
+house. The immediate surroundings of Dogtown were squalid, although its
+site upon the edge of Lake Mononset might have been made very pleasant
+indeed.
+
+"If these boys like Monty Shannon and some of the girls stay at home
+when they grow up they surely will improve the looks of the village,"
+Jessie had said. "For Monty and his kind are altogether too smart not to
+want to live as other people do."
+
+"You've said it," agreed Amy, with enthusiasm. "He is smart. He has a
+better radio receiver than you have. Wait till you see."
+
+"How do you know?" asked the surprised Jessie.
+
+"He was telling me about it. You know how often some 'squeak box,' or
+other amateur operator, breaks in on our concerts."
+
+"We-ell, not so often now," Jessie said. "I have learned more about
+tuning and wave-lengths. But, of course, I have only a single circuit
+crystal receiving set. I have been talking to Dad about getting a better
+one."
+
+"Monty will show you," Amy said with confidence, as they knocked at the
+Shannon door.
+
+The little cottage was small. Downstairs there were but two rooms. The
+door gave access to the kitchen, and beyond was the "sitting-room," of
+which Monty's mother was inordinately proud. She was a widow, and helped
+herself and her children by doing fine laundry work for the wealthy
+people of New Melford.
+
+From the front room when the girls entered came sounds that they
+recognized--radio sounds which held their instant attention, although
+they were merely market reports at that hour in the forenoon.
+
+"Isn't it wonderful?" Bertha Blair said, clasping her hands. "I never
+can get over the wonder of it."
+
+"Same here," Amy declared. "When Jess and I listened to you singing the
+'Will o' the Wisp' last night it seemed almost shivery that we should
+recognize the very tones of your voice out of the air."
+
+"Huh!" exclaimed Montmorency, grinning. "I got so I know the announcers,
+too. When that Mr. Blair speaks I know him. Of course, I know Mr. Mark
+Stratford's voice, for I've talked with him. I wouldn't have such a fine
+machine here, only he advised me."
+
+"Tell me," Jessie said, "what is the difference between my receiving set
+and yours, Monty?"
+
+"If you want to hear clearly and keep outside radio out of your machine,
+use a regenerative radio set with an audion detector. The whole
+business, Miss Jessie, is in the detector, after all. A regenerative set
+of this kind is selective enough--that's the expression Mr. Mark used--to
+enable any one to tune out all but a few commercial stations. And they
+don't often butt in to annoy you. For sure, you'll kill all the amateur
+squeak-boxes and other transmission stations of that class.
+
+"Now, I'm going to tune in for Stratfordtown. They are sending the
+Government weather reports and mother wants to know should she water her
+tomatoes or depend on a thunderstorm," and he grinned at Mrs. Shannon,
+who stood, an awkward but smiling figure, in the doorway between the two
+rooms.
+
+"'Tis too wonderful a thing for me to understand, at all, at all,"
+admitted the widow. "However can they tell you out of that machine there
+is a thunderstorm coming?"
+
+"Listen!" exclaimed the boy eagerly. There was a horn on the set and no
+need for earphones. He had tuned the market reports out. From the horn
+came a different voice. But the words the visitors heard had nothing to
+do with the report on the weather. "What's the matter?" demanded Monty
+Shannon. "Listen to this, will you?"
+
+"... she will come home at once. This is serious--a serious call for
+Bertha Blair."
+
+"Do you hear that?" almost shrieked Amy Drew. "Why, it must mean you,
+Bertha!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--CHANGED PLANS
+
+
+"How ridiculous!" Jessie cried. "That surely cannot mean you, Bertha."
+
+"Hush!" begged Amy. "It's uncanny."
+
+Again the slow voice enunciated: "Bertha Blair will come home at once.
+This is serious--a serious call for Bertha Blair."
+
+"Criminy!" shouted Monty Shannon. "I know who that is. It's Mr. Mark
+Stratford."
+
+"He is calling for you, Bertha," said Jessie. "Can it be possible?"
+
+"Something has happened!" gasped Bertha, starting for the door of the
+cottage. "Where is that child?"
+
+"Never mind Henrietta. We will take care of her," Jessie called after
+the worried girl, wishing to relieve her anxiety.
+
+Bertha ran out of the house, and the next moment the Roselawn girls
+heard the car start. Bertha was being whisked away to Stratfordtown. The
+voice of Mark Stratford continued to repeat the call several times. Then
+he read the weather report, as expected.
+
+"I can tell you one thing," Jessie said eagerly to her chum and the
+Shannons. "Mark Stratford does not usually give out the announcements
+from that station. Now, does he, Monty?"
+
+"No, ma'am, Miss Jessie. Only once in a while."
+
+"Then something has happened at the Blair house, or to Mr. Blair
+himself. That is why they send out this call, hoping that somebody down
+here would get it and tell Bertha."
+
+"Think! How funny it must feel to hear your name called out of the air
+in that way," Amy remarked.
+
+"Why, we had that experience ourselves," Jessie said. "Don't you
+remember? Mark thanked us publicly for finding his watch."
+
+"But that was not just like this," replied Amy. "Anyway, there is
+something unsatisfactory about radio--and always will be--until we can
+'talk back' as well as receive. See! If Monty had a sending set as well
+as a receiving, he could have answered Mark Stratford, and told him
+Bertha had heard the call and was starting home without any delay."
+
+"I am afraid something really serious has happened," Jessie said. "Let's
+go back home and call up Stratfordtown on the telephone."
+
+"We'll take Hen along with us," agreed Amy. "You said we'd take care of
+her."
+
+This the Roselawn girls did. When they set out from Dogtown in their
+canoe, Henrietta sat amidships. She was delighted to visit the Norwoods.
+She had stayed over night with Jessie before.
+
+They passed the flotilla of tubs and barrels that the Dogtown children
+had set afloat. Mrs. Shannon would never see her washtubs again.
+Meanwhile the Costello twins and Charlie Foley had set out to walk
+around the lake and recover the big canoe from the place where it had
+drifted ashore on the other side.
+
+"They certainly are the worst young ones," commented Amy Drew. "Always
+in mischief of some kind."
+
+"There ain't much else to get into at Dogtown," said little Henrietta
+soberly. "We don't have any boy scouts or girl scouts or anything like
+that. They have _them_ at Stratfordtown. Mrs. Blair told me about 'em. I
+guess I'll join the girl scouts and take 'em all out on my island."
+
+Little Henrietta was still intensely excited about "her island." What
+the Roselawn girls heard over the telephone when they got home again was
+not encouraging. It seemed at first that Henrietta must be disappointed.
+
+Jessie ran in to the telephone as soon as they arrived. She did not know
+the number of Mr. Blair's private telephone--if he had one. But she knew
+how to get in touch with Mark Stratford whether he was at his home or at
+the offices of the Stratford Electric Company. She was able to speak
+with the young man almost at once, and questioned him excitedly.
+
+"Yes. I know that Bertha has got home. I took a chance to reach her at
+Dogtown when I heard where she had gone," Mark Stratford said. "You know
+Monty Shannon is a protege of mine, and I have an idea he is listening
+in most of the time at that set he has built."
+
+"But what is the matter? Has Mr. Blair been hurt?"
+
+"It is Mrs. Blair. She fell downstairs and has hurt herself severely.
+Did it not ten minutes after Bertha went out. Broke her leg. She will be
+in bed for weeks. I understand that they were planning to go away for
+the summer," said Mark, sympathetically. "But that cannot be now. At
+least, I suppose Bertha will have to remain to take care of her aunt."
+
+"Sh! Don't tell little Hen," begged Amy Drew, when she heard this. "The
+child will be heartbroken. Without Bertha and Mrs. Blair Hennie can't go
+to her island."
+
+Jessie made no audible reply to this. And she certainly had no intention
+of telling Henrietta the very worst. She discussed the situation with
+Momsy, and before Daddy Norwood returned from town that afternoon mother
+and daughter had just about perfected a very nice plan for little
+Henrietta.
+
+"Well, you are to go to Hackle Island, Momsy," Mr. Norwood said, when he
+first came in. "I have signed the agreement. You can send the people
+down to make the house ready to-morrow, if you like. I understand there
+will not be much to do about the place. We can all go by the end of the
+week."
+
+"You take my breath away--as usual," laughed Jessie's mother. "You are
+always so prompt, Robert."
+
+"And you will have a house full of company, I suppose?" he rejoined, but
+looking at Jessie with a smile.
+
+"We are going to have one guest you didn't expect, Daddy," rejoined his
+daughter. She told him swiftly of what had happened at the Blair home in
+Stratfordtown. "So that spoils it all for little Henrietta, you see,
+Daddy, if we don't take her. And you know she is crazy to see what she
+calls her island."
+
+"Sure that she won't make you and Momsy crazy, Jess?" he asked, his eyes
+twinkling. "That child is as lively as an eel and as noisy as a
+steam-roller."
+
+"How can you say such things, Daddy?" cried Jessie, shaking a reproving
+head. "We have agreed to take her if you and the Blairs are willing. And
+Momsy and I will try to teach her the things she'll need to know."
+
+"M-mm. Well, perhaps you will have success. You have done pretty well
+with me," laughed Mr. Norwood, who made believe that his wife and
+daughter had "brought him up by hand." "Being guided in any way will be
+a novel experience for little Hen, that is sure."
+
+He agreed so well with his wife's and Jessie's plans, however, that he
+called Mr. Blair up that evening and proposed to keep little Henrietta
+and take her to Hackle, or Station, Island, while Mrs. Blair was
+confined to her house. As Jessie's father, along with Mr. Drew, had
+taken legal charge of Henrietta's affairs for the time being, it was
+right that the orphan child should be in Mrs. Norwood's care.
+
+"There is an almost certain chance the child is going to be very
+wealthy," Mr. Norwood said seriously, to Jessie's mother. "Her education
+and improvement cannot begin too soon. She is as wild as a hawk and she
+needs encouragement and government both."
+
+Henrietta took quite as a matter of course every change that came to
+her. She had no particular affection for Mrs. Blair, for she had not
+known her long enough. She was delighted to go to "her island" with
+Jessie and her parents. As long as she got there and could survey her
+domain, little Henrietta was bound to be satisfied. But Jessie knew she
+would have to restrain the child in her desire to invite everybody she
+knew and liked to come to the island while she was there.
+
+The Norwood family had not even discussed how they were to travel to the
+island--by what route--when Amy Drew bounded in. Jessie and Henrietta were
+upstairs in Jessie's room listening to the bedtime story. A little girl
+not much older than Henrietta was telling the story, and Henrietta
+thought that was quite wonderful.
+
+"I know that Bertha and you other big girls sing into the radio," the
+freckle-faced child said, when it was over. "Do you suppose Mr. Blair
+would let me recite into it like that?"
+
+"What would you say?" asked Amy, laughing as her chum and the smaller
+girl removed their earphones.
+
+"Why--why," said Henrietta eagerly, "I would tell stories, too. Spotted
+Snake, the Witch, used to tell stories to Billy Foley and the other
+Dogtown kids to keep them quiet. And they liked 'em."
+
+"We'll see about that when we come back from your island, Henrietta,"
+said Jessie, smiling.
+
+"And listen!" exclaimed Amy. "You remember I said I had a great idea
+about our going to Hackle Island. I didn't finish telling you, Jess."
+
+"That is right," her chum rejoined. "And no wonder, when we spied that
+crew of crazy ones venturing to sea in tubs!" and Jessie laughed.
+
+"Listen here," Amy said more seriously. "The boys have come home. I told
+you they were due. The _Marigold_ is all right now. Her engines and
+everything are working fine. So, why don't we take this opportunity to
+see what she is like. Darry has promised us long enough."
+
+"Oh, but we are going to Hackle Island!" cried Jessie.
+
+"Station Island," put in Henrietta. "My island."
+
+"Of course. That is what I mean," Amy hastened to say. "Instead of
+taking the train and then the regular boat, why not get the boys to take
+us all the way from the yacht club moorings to Station Island, or
+whatever it is called?"
+
+"Why, Amy, that would be fine!" cried Jessie. "Will Darry do it?"
+
+"He will or I shall disown him as a brother," declared her chum, with
+vigor.
+
+"Let's run and see what Momsy says!" exclaimed the eager Jessie.
+
+"We'd better go and _hear_ what she says," laughed the irrepressible
+Amy. "Come on, Hen! You want to be in it. Wouldn't you like a boat ride
+to your island?"
+
+"Why, how do you suppose I was going to get there?" demanded the little
+maid. "Automobiles don't run to islands--nor yet steam trains. But I hope
+the boat won't leak as bad as that trough me and Charlie Foley sailed in
+this morning," she added thoughtfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--FORECASTS
+
+
+The plan Amy had originated for going to Station Island on her brother's
+yacht was approved by Jessie's mother and father, and in the end the
+Drew family agreed to make the voyage, too. Mrs. Norwood sent down her
+housekeeper and a staff of servants in advance so that everything would
+be in readiness for the yachting party.
+
+A few articles of clothing had been bought for Henrietta when she had
+gone to the Blairs. But, besides being few, they were hardly suitable
+for an outing on Station Island. So Jessie and Amy were allowed to use
+their own taste in selecting the child's outfit for the island
+adventure. And how they did revel in this novel undertaking!
+
+Being down town on these errands so much during the following two days,
+the Roselawn girls were bound to fall in with Belle Ringold and Sally
+Moon, as well as with other members of their class in the high school.
+Jessie, at least, would never have noticed Belle and her chum could she
+have avoided it.
+
+Amy had an overpowering fondness for a concoction called a George
+Washington sundae which was to be found only at the New Melford Dainties
+Shop. So, of course, each shopping "spree" must end with a visit to the
+confectionary shop in question.
+
+"Come on," Amy said, on the second day. "I told Darry and Burd we'd wait
+for them, and we might as well ride home as walk. They have our second
+car. Cyprian is driving mamma to a round of afternoon teas and other
+junkets. But the boys won't forget us. Come on."
+
+"'Come on' means only one place to come to," laughed Jessie. "I know
+you. What shall we do on that island, Amy, without any George Washington
+sundaes?"
+
+"Say not so!" begged the other girl. "There is a fancy hotel there, they
+say, and perhaps it has a soda fountain."
+
+"Hi! Amy Drew!" called a voice behind them, as they descended the two
+steps into the Dainties Shop.
+
+"Well, would you ever?" demanded Amy, looking around with no eagerness.
+"If it isn't Sally Moon and, of course, Belle."
+
+"Hi, Amy!" repeated Sally. "Let me ask you something."
+
+"Go ahead," returned Amy, but in no encouraging tone. "It's free to
+ask."
+
+Sally, however, was not easily discouraged. Evidently Belle had put her
+up to ask whatever the question was, and to keep friendly with Belle
+Ringold Sally had to perform a good many unpleasant tasks.
+
+"Your brother and Burd Alling have got back with that yacht, haven't
+they?" she demanded.
+
+"You are correctly informed," answered Amy lightly.
+
+"We want to see them. I suppose the boat is all right? That is, it is
+safe, isn't it?"
+
+"So far it hasn't sunk with them," returned Amy scornfully.
+
+"You needn't be so snippy, Amy Drew," broke in Belle. "We want to see
+your brother about the use of the _Marigold_. I suppose he will let it
+to a party--for a price?"
+
+"I don't know," said Amy, staring.
+
+"Why, that's absurd!" Jessie declared, without thinking. "It is a
+pleasure boat, not a cargo boat."
+
+Amy began to laugh when she saw Belle's face.
+
+"They don't even take passengers for hire," she said. "Is that what you
+want to know?"
+
+"We want to hire a yacht to take us to Station Island," Sally hastened
+to say. "And Belle remembered Darrington's boat----"
+
+"I don't suppose it is fit to take such a party as ours will be,"
+interposed Belle.
+
+"I guess Darry won't want to let it," said Amy, seeing that the two
+girls were in earnest. "Besides, we are going down ourselves this week."
+
+"Who are going where?" demanded Belle, sharply.
+
+"It's the Norwoods' party, you know," Amy said, for Jessie had "shut up
+as tight as a clam." "Mrs. Norwood has taken a bungalow there."
+
+"On Station Island--Hackle Island it used to be called?" Sally cried.
+
+"That is the place. And Darry will take us all on the _Marigold_. So, I
+guess----"
+
+"We might have known it!" exclaimed Belle, angrily. "The Norwoods or
+some of that Roselawn crowd would tag along if we planned something
+exclusive."
+
+But Amy only laughed at this. "You don't own that island, do you?
+Remember what little Hen Haney said about owning an island? Well,
+Hackle, or Station Island, is the one she meant. She owns a big slice of
+it."
+
+"I don't believe it!" cried Belle.
+
+"She does. My father says so. And he and Mr. Norwood are going to get it
+for her."
+
+"They will have a fine time doing that," sneered Belle. "Why, _my_
+father has a claim upon all the middle of the island, and he is going to
+make his claim good. That nasty little freckle-faced young one from
+Dogtown will never get a foot of Hackle Island--you'll see!"
+
+Amy shrugged her shoulders as she and Jessie took seats at a table. She
+knew how to aggravate Belle Ringold, and she sometimes rather impishly
+enjoyed bothering the proud girl.
+
+"And there's one thing," went on Belle, with emphasis, so exasperated
+that she did not see Nick, the clerk, who was waiting for her order, "I
+wouldn't go away for the summer unless we went to a really fashionable
+hotel. No, indeed! Cottagers at seaside places are always of such a
+common sort!"
+
+Amy only laughed. Jessie remained silent. It really did trouble her to
+have these controversies with Belle. It was not nice and she did not
+feel right after they were over.
+
+"There is something wrong with us, as well as with Belle," Jessie said
+once to Amy, on this topic.
+
+"I'd like to know what's wrong with us?" her chum demanded. "I like
+that!"
+
+"When we squabble with Belle and Sally we make ourselves just as common
+as they are."
+
+"Tut, tut! Likewise 'go to,' whatever that means," laughed Amy Drew.
+"Why, child, if we did not keep up our end of any controversy that those
+girls start they would walk all over us."
+
+However, on this occasion, and at Jessie's earnest desire, Amy hastened
+the eating of her George Washington sundae and the two friends got out
+of the shop before Darry and Burd Alling appeared in the car.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Amy's brother, when the car stopped before
+the Dainties Shop and he saw his sister and Jessie waiting. "Spent all
+your money and waiting for us to take you in and treat you?"
+
+"We had ours," Jessie replied promptly, getting into the tonneau.
+
+"Yes, indeed. 'Home, James!'" Amy added, following her chum.
+
+"And so we are to be deprived of our needed nourishment because you
+piggy-wiggies have had enough?" demanded Burd Alling, with serious
+objection. "I--guess--not! Come along, Darry," and he hopped out of the
+car.
+
+"You'd better look ahead before you leap," giggled Amy.
+
+"What's that?" asked Darry, hesitating and looking at his sister
+curiously.
+
+"What's up her sleeve?" demanded Burd, with suspicion.
+
+"You can treat Belle and Sally instead of Jessie and me, if you go in,"
+said Amy.
+
+"Oh, my aunt!" exclaimed Burd, and sprang into the automobile again.
+"Drive on, Darrington! If you love me take me away before those girls
+get their hooks in me."
+
+"Don't mind about you," growled Darrington, starting the car. "I will
+look out for myself, if you please. I hope I never meet up with those
+two girls again."
+
+At that his sister went off into uncontrollable laughter.
+
+"To think!" she cried. "And Belle and Sally are going to be all summer
+on Station Island!"
+
+"That settles it," announced Darry. "Burd and I will spend our time
+aboard the _Marigold_. How about it, Burd?"
+
+"Surest thing you know. At least we can escape those two on the yacht."
+
+And this amused Amy immensely, too. For was not Belle desirous of
+chartering the _Marigold_?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--ABOARD THE "MARIGOLD"
+
+
+Before she was ready to go to Station Island Jessie Norwood had a few
+purchases to make that had nothing to do with little Henrietta Haney.
+She had decided to disconnect her radio set and send the instrument down
+with the rest of the baggage. In addition, she was determined to take
+Monty Shannon's advice and buy the additional parts which made the
+Dogtown boy's set so much more successful than her own.
+
+"We'll buy wire for the antenna, of course," Jessie said to Amy. "Let
+our old aerial stand till we return. All we shall have to do will be to
+hook it up again when we set up the set in my room."
+
+So they bought the wire, the lightning switch, and the other small parts
+in New Melford and sent them all on the truck with the trunks to the
+dock where the _Marigold_ waited. The next day the two families, the
+Norwoods and the Drews, as well as Burd Alling and little Henrietta,
+were whisked to the yacht club dock in several automobiles.
+
+The girls had heard from Bertha over the telephone. And considering the
+state of mind and body that Mrs. Blair was in, the poor woman was
+probably very well content that Henrietta should be in Mrs. Norwood's
+care for a while.
+
+The freckle-faced little girl was wild with excitement when she got
+aboard Darry's yacht. She had never been on such a craft before.
+
+"I declare," said Amy, "we'll have to put a ball and chain on this kid,
+or she will be overboard."
+
+Henrietta stared at her. "Is that one of those locket and chain things
+you wear around your neck? I'm going to buy me one when I get my island.
+I never did own any joolry."
+
+This set Amy off into a breeze of laughter, but Jessie realized that
+Henrietta was perfectly fearless and would need watching while they were
+on the yacht.
+
+The _Marigold_ was by no means a new vessel, but it was roomy and
+seaworthy. That it was a coal-burner rather than a modern oil-burner, or
+with gasoline engines, did not at all decrease its value in the eyes of
+its young owner. Darry Drew was inordinately proud of the yacht.
+
+He ran it with a small crew, and he and Burd, or whoever of his boy
+friends he had aboard, did a share of the work.
+
+"I declare!" sniffed Amy, "I suppose you will expect Jess and me to go
+down and stoke the furnaces for you if you get short handed. Why not?
+You expect Mrs. Norwood and mamma to do the cooking."
+
+"Oh, that's only for this voyage. When we have only fellows aboard we
+all take turns cooking and get along all right."
+
+"Does Burd cook?" demanded Amy, in mock horror.
+
+"Well, he is pretty bad," admitted Darry, with a grin. "But we let him
+cook only on days when the sea is rough."
+
+"And why?" demanded his sister, with wide-open eyes.
+
+"We never feel much like eating on rough days," explained Darry. "You
+see, the _Marigold_ kicks up quite a shindy when the sea is choppy."
+
+"Let us hope it will be calm all the way to Station Island," Jessie
+cried.
+
+She had her wish. At least, the wind was fair, the sea "kicked up no
+combobberation," to quote her chum, and every one enjoyed the sail. If
+the _Marigold_ was not a racing boat, her speed was sufficient. They had
+no desire to get to the island until the following day.
+
+Darry's sailing master was a seasoned old mariner named Pandrick. They
+called him Skipper. At noon the yacht crossed one of the many "banks" to
+which New York fishing boats sail and the skipper pronounced the time
+opportune for fishing.
+
+"There's blackfish and flounders on the bottom and yellow-fin and maybe
+bass higher up. You won't find a better chance, Mr. Darry," observed the
+sailing master.
+
+Every one grew excited over this prospect, and the boys got out the
+tackle and bait. Even Henrietta must fish. Jessie had been about to
+suggest a cushioned seat in the cabin for the little girl, with a pillow
+and a rug, for she had seen Henrietta nodding after lunch. The child
+would not hear of anything like that.
+
+The anchor was dropped quietly and the _Marigold_ swung at that mooring
+while the fishermen took their stations. Darry gave his personal
+attention to Henrietta's bait and showed her how to cast her line. The
+little girl had been fishing many times, if only for fresh water fish,
+and she was not awkward.
+
+"Don't you bother 'bout me, Miss Jessie," she said to her mentor
+impatiently. "I bet I get a fish before you do. I ain't so slow."
+
+Amy had fixed a station for her chum beside her own in the shade of the
+awning. Mr. Norwood and Mr. Drew had brought their rods. Everybody was
+soon engaged in an occupation which really calls for the undivided
+attention of the fisherman. The boys ordered all of them to keep quiet.
+
+"You know," observed Burd sternly, "although these fish out here may be
+dumb, they are not deaf. You chatterboxes keep quiet."
+
+Jessie was greatly excited. She had a nibble on her hook, then a
+positive strike.
+
+"Oh! O-oh" she squealed under her breath. "There's--there's something!"
+
+"Is it a wolf or a bear?" demanded Amy, giggling.
+
+"Can you get it aboard, Jess?" asked Darry, from the other side of the
+deck.
+
+Jessie was not awkward. She had pulled in a good-sized fish before. This
+one splashed about a great deal and, when she raised it to the surface,
+it looked so much like a big rubber boot that Jessie squealed and almost
+dropped it.
+
+"Hey! What did I say about that stuff?" called out Burd. "You'll give
+all the fish nervous prostration. My goodness! What is that?"
+
+He hurried to give Jessie a hand in hauling up the heavy, slowly
+flapping fish. It was half as broad as a dining table, with one side
+grayish-white and the other slate color. The skipper gave it a glance
+and laughed.
+
+"Virgin," he said. "We don't eat that kind o' fish."
+
+"Oh, dear! isn't it a flounder?" wailed Jessie, disconsolately.
+
+"No, no. 'Tain't worth anything," said the skipper, unhooking the heavy
+and ugly-looking fish.
+
+They joked Jessie about the worthless flat-fish, but she laughed, too.
+Baiting again, she threw in, and just at that moment there was a heavy
+splash from the other side of the yacht.
+
+"Somebody else has got a strike," cried Amy. "Who is it?"
+
+Nobody answered. There seemed to be nobody excited over a bite. The two
+lawyers were forward. Darry and Burd were aft. Jessie suddenly dropped
+her line and shot across the deck to the other rail.
+
+"Oh, Amy!" she shrieked. "Where is little Hen?"
+
+"You don't mean she's gone overboard?" gasped her chum, excitedly, and
+she came running in the wake of Jessie.
+
+Henrietta's fish line was attached to a cleat on the yacht's rail. She
+had been standing on a coil of rope so as to be high enough to look over
+into the sea. The fear that clamped itself upon Jessie Norwood's mind
+was that the little girl had dived headlong over the rail.
+
+"Oh, Henrietta!" she cried. "She--she's gone! She's gone overboard, Amy."
+
+Her chum was quite as fearful as Jessie was, but she tried to soothe her
+chum.
+
+"It can't be, Jess! She--she wouldn't do that! She just wouldn't!"
+
+"But you heard that big splash, didn't you?" cried the frightened
+Jessie. Then she began to shout as loud as she could: "Help! Help!
+Henrietta's overboard! She's gone overboard, I am sure!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--GOSSIP OUT OF THE ETHER
+
+
+Jessie's cry startled everybody on deck and Darry and Burd came running
+from the stern.
+
+"Where is she? Do you see her? Throw out a buoy!" exclaimed the young
+owner of the yacht. "Hey, Skipper Pandrick! Lower the boat."
+
+"Man overboard!" shouted Burd Alling.
+
+"Get out!" exclaimed Darry. "It's not a man at all. It's little Hen. Is
+that right, Jessie? Did you see her fall?"
+
+"No-o," replied Jessie. "But she's not here. Where else could she have
+gone?"
+
+Burd stared up and all about. Amy said promptly:
+
+"You needn't look into the air, Burd. Hen certainly didn't fly away."
+
+The skipper arrived, but he was not excited. "Who did you say had gone
+overboard, Mr. Darry?" he asked.
+
+"What does it matter? Can't we save her without so much red tape?"
+snapped Darry. "Come on, Skipper! Get out the boat."
+
+"You mean the little girl who stood right here?" asked the man. "Well,
+now, I saw how she was playing her line. She didn't have it fastened to
+a cleat. And she sure didn't just now fasten it when she went overboard.
+No, I guess not."
+
+"Oh! Maybe he is right," cried Jessie, with much relief.
+
+"Well, I declare!" grumbled Darry. "It takes you girls to stir up
+excitement."
+
+"But where is little Hen?" Amy asked, whirling around to face her
+brother.
+
+They all stared at one another. The skipper wagged his head.
+
+"You'd better look around, alow and aloft, and see if she ain't to be
+found. If she did go down, she ain't come up again, that's sure."
+
+"But that splash!" cried Jessie, anxiously.
+
+"Wasn't any splash except when I threw that big flatfish overboard,"
+said the skipper. "And the little girl didn't scream. I guess she's
+inboard rather than overboard--yes, ma'am!"
+
+The four young people separated and scoured the yacht, both on deck and
+below. At least, the girls looked through the cabin and the staterooms
+and the boys went into the tiny forecastle. They met again in five
+minutes or so and stared wonderingly at each other. Little Henrietta had
+as utterly disappeared as though she had melted into thin air.
+
+"What can have happened to the poor little thing?" cried Amy, now almost
+in tears.
+
+"Of course, she must be on the boat if she hasn't fallen overboard,"
+Jessie replied hesitatingly.
+
+"That is wisdom," remarked Burd Alling, dryly. "She hasn't flown away,
+that's sure."
+
+The two mothers were on the afterdeck in comfortable chairs; Jessie
+hated to disturb them, for Mrs. Norwood and Mrs. Drew had not heard the
+first outcry regarding Henrietta. Mr. Norwood and Mr. Drew were busy
+with their fishing-lines. Neither of the four adult passengers had seen
+the child.
+
+"I'll be hanged, but that is the greatest kid I ever saw!" exclaimed
+Darry Drew with vigor. "She's always in some mischief or other."
+
+"I am so afraid she is in trouble," confessed Jessie. "You know, we are
+responsible to her cousin Bertha Blair for her safety."
+
+"If the kid wants to dive overboard, are we to be held responsible?"
+demanded Burd, somewhat crossly.
+
+"You hard-hearted boy!" exclaimed Amy. "Of course it is your fault if
+anything happens to Hennie."
+
+"I told you, Drew, that you were making a big mistake to let this crowd
+of girls aboard the _Marigold_," complained the stocky youth, sighing
+deeply. "While this was strictly a bachelor barque we were all right."
+
+Jessie, however, was really too much worried to enter into any repartee
+of this character. She ran off again to the cabin to have a second look
+for Henrietta. She found no trace of her except the doll she had brought
+aboard and the green parasol.
+
+She went back on deck. The fishermen were beginning to haul in weakfish
+and an occasional tautog, or blackfish. Amy, with a shout, hauled in
+Henrietta's line and got inboard a fine flounder.
+
+"Anyway, we'll have a big fish-fry for supper. The men will clean the
+fish and Darry and Burd will fry them. Your mother and mine, Jess, say
+that they have got through with the galley for the day."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Jessie and, whirling suddenly around, started for the
+galley slide.
+
+"Where are you going?" cried Amy. "Do help me with this flopping fish. I
+can't get the hook out."
+
+Her chum did not halt. She knew that nobody had thought to look into the
+cook's galley that had been shut up after lunch. She forced back the
+slide and peered in.
+
+There on the deck of the little compartment, with her back against the
+wall, or bulkhead, was Henrietta. On one side was a jar of strawberry
+jam only half full. Much of the sticky sweet was smeared upon the
+cracker clutched in the child's hand and upon her face and the front of
+her frock. Henrietta was asleep!
+
+"What is it?" demanded Amy, who had followed her more excited chum.
+"What's happened to her?"
+
+"Look at that!" exclaimed Jessie, dramatically.
+
+Darry and Burd drew near. Amy burst into stifled laughter.
+
+"What do you know about that kid? She asked me if she could have a bite
+between meals and I told her of course she could. But I never thought
+she would take me so at my word." Amy's laughter was no longer stifled.
+
+"Fishing in the jam jar is more to Hen's taste than fishing in the
+ocean," observed Darry.
+
+"Nervy kid!" exclaimed Burd. "I'd like some of that jam myself."
+
+"Bring him away," commanded Jessie, pushing to the slide. "She might as
+well sleep. We will know where she is, anyway."
+
+This little scare rather broke up the fishing for the Roselawn girls and
+the college boys. They went to the wireless room which had been built on
+deck behind the wheelhouse, and Darry put on the head harness and opened
+the key by which he took the messages he was able to obtain out of the
+air.
+
+The girls were particularly interested in this form of radio telegraphy
+at this time. Darry had bought and was establishing a regular radio
+telephone receiving set, too. He could give Jessie and Amy a deal of
+information about the Morse alphabet as used in the commercial wireless
+service.
+
+"Practice makes perfect," he told them. "You can buy an ordinary key and
+sounder and practice until you can send fast. While you are learning
+that you automatically learn to read Morse. But I'll have the radio set
+all right shortly and then we can get the station concerts."
+
+"How near we'll be to that station on the island!" Amy cried. "It ought
+to sound as though it were right in our ears."
+
+"Not through your radiophone," said her brother. "That station is a
+great brute of a commercial and signal station. It sends clear to the
+European shore. No concerts broadcasted from there. Now, let's see if we
+can get some gossip out of the air."
+
+The girls took turns listening in, even though they could not understand
+more than a letter or two of Morse. Darry translated for their benefit
+certain general messages he caught. They learned that operators on the
+trans-Atlantic liners and on the cargo boats often talked back and
+forth, swapping yarns, news, and personal information. Occasionally a
+navy operator "crashed in" with a few words.
+
+Calls came for vessels all up and down the North Atlantic. Information
+as to weather indications were broadcasted from Arlington. The air
+seemed full of voices, each to be caught at a certain wave-length.
+
+"It is wonderful!" Jessie exclaimed. "'Gossip out of the air' is the
+right name for it. Just think of it, Amy! When we were born there was
+very little known about all this wonderful wireless."
+
+"Sh!" commanded her chum. "Don't remind folks how frightfully young we
+are."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--ISLAND ADVENTURES
+
+
+The _Marigold_ loafed along within sight of the beaches that evening and
+the girls and their friends reclined in the deck-chairs and watched the
+parti-colored electric lights that wreathed the shore-front. Jessie was
+careful to keep Henrietta near by. She began to realize that looking
+after the freckle-faced little girl was going to be something of a
+trial.
+
+Henrietta finally grew sleepy and Jessie and Amy took her below, helped
+her undress, and tucked her into a berth. The Roselawn girls' mothers
+were much amused by this. Their daughters had taken a task upon
+themselves that would, as Mrs. Norwood said, teach them something.
+
+"And it will not hurt them," Mrs. Drew agreed, with an answering smile.
+"Amy, especially, needs to know what 'duty' means."
+
+"Anyway, we'll know where she is while she is asleep," Jessie said to
+her chum, as they left the little girl.
+
+"If she isn't a somnambulist," chuckled Amy. "We forgot to ask Mrs.
+Foley or Bertha that."
+
+The ground swell lulled the girls to sleep that night, and even
+Henrietta did not awake until the first breakfast call in the morning.
+Through the port-light Jessie and Amy saw Burd Alling "bursting his
+cheeks with sound" as he essayed the changes on the key-bugle.
+
+The _Marigold_ was slipping along the coast easily, with the northern
+end of Station Island already in sight. The castle-like hotel sprawled
+all over the headland, but the widest bathing beach was just below it.
+Next were the premises of the Hackle Island Gold Club, with its
+pastures, shrubberies, and several water-holes. It was to a part of
+these enclosed premises that Mr. Norwood said little Henrietta Haney was
+laying claim.
+
+"And I believe she will get it in time. Most of the land on which those
+summer houses beyond the golf course stand is also within the lines of
+the Padriac Haney place."
+
+He explained this to them while they all paced the deck after breakfast.
+The yacht was headed in toward the dock near the bungalows, some of
+which were very cheaply built and stood upon stilts near the shore.
+
+The tall gray staff of the abandoned lighthouse was the landmark at the
+extreme southern end of the island. The sending and receiving station of
+the commercial wireless company was at the lighthouse, and the party
+aboard the _Marigold_ could see the very tall antenna connected
+therewith.
+
+The yacht landed the party and their baggage about ten o'clock. Mrs.
+Norwood's servants were at hand to help, and a decrepit express wagon
+belonging to a "native" aided in the transportation of the goods to the
+big bungalow which was some rods back from the shore. There were no
+automobiles on the island.
+
+"Is this my house?" Henrietta demanded the moment she learned which
+dwelling the party of vacationists would occupy.
+
+"It may prove to be your house in the end," Jessie told her.
+
+"When's the end?" was the blunt query. "How long do I have to wait?"
+
+"We can't tell that. My mother has the house for the summer. She has
+hired it for us all to live in."
+
+"Who does she pay? Do I get any of the money?" continued the little
+girl. "If this island is going to be mine some time, why not now? Why
+wait for something that is mine?"
+
+It was very difficult for Jessie and Amy to make her understand the
+situation. In fact, she began to feel and express doubts about the
+attempt that was being made to discover and settle the legal phases of
+the Padriac Haney estate.
+
+"If I don't get my money and my island pretty soon somebody else will
+get it instead," was the little girl's confident statement.
+
+"Oh, Jess!" exclaimed Amy under her breath, "suppose that should be so.
+You know Belle Ringold's father is trying to prove his title to the same
+property."
+
+"Hush!" said Jessie. "Don't let little Hen hear about that. She is
+getting hard to manage as it is. Henrietta! Where are you going now?"
+she called after the little girl.
+
+"I'm going out to take a look at some of my island," declared the child,
+as she banged the screen door.
+
+"She's sure to get into trouble," Jessie observed, sighing.
+
+"Oh, let her go," Amy declared. "Why worry? You can't watch her every
+minute we are here. She can't very well fall overboard from this
+island."
+
+"I don't know. She manages to do the most unexpected things," said
+Jessie.
+
+But there was so much to do in helping settle things and make the
+sparsely furnished bungalow comfortable that Jessie did not think for a
+while about Henrietta. Besides, she was desirous of setting up the radio
+instruments at once and stringing the antenna.
+
+Darry and Burd helped the girls do this last. They worked hard, for they
+had first of all to plant in the sands some distance from the house an
+old mast that Mr. Norwood bought so as to erect the wires at least
+thirty feet above the ground.
+
+The antenna were not completed at nightfall. Then, of a sudden,
+everybody began to wonder about Henrietta. Where was she? It was
+remembered that she had not been seen during most of the afternoon.
+
+"Oh, dear!" worried Jessie. "It is my fault. I should not have let her
+go out alone that time, Amy."
+
+"She said she wanted to see her island, I remember," admitted her chum,
+with some gravity. "And this island is a pretty big place, and it is
+growing dark."
+
+"She could not get into any trouble if she stayed on Hackle Island,"
+declared Darry. "What a kid!"
+
+"And she certainly couldn't have got off it," suggested Burd.
+
+"We must look around for her," said Jessie, with conviction. "Don't tell
+Momsy. She will worry. She thinks I have had my eye on the child all the
+time."
+
+"You certainly would have what they call a roving eye if you managed to
+keep it on Henrietta," giggled Burd Alling. "She darts about like a
+swallow."
+
+Jessie felt it to be no joking matter. The four young people separated
+and went in different directions to hunt for the missing child. Station,
+or Hackle, Island at this end was mostly sand dunes or open flats. A
+little sparse grass grew in bunches, and there were clumps of beach plum
+bushes. Towards the golf course the land was higher and there real lawn
+and trees of some size were growing.
+
+The low sand dunes stretched in gray windrows right across the island.
+Jessie tried to think what might have first attracted Henrietta at this
+end of the island. She did not believe that she would go far from the
+bungalow, although Amy wanted to start at once for the hotel. That was
+the object that attracted her first of all.
+
+Jessie ran toward the far side of the island. It was growing dark and
+everything on both sea and shore looked gray and misty. The seabirds
+swept overhead and whistled mournfully. Jessie shouted Henrietta's name
+as she ran.
+
+But she began to labor up and down the sand dunes with difficulty. It
+frightened Jessie Norwood very much whenever Henrietta got into mischief
+or into danger. No knowing what harm might come to her on this lonely
+part of Station Island.
+
+Nor was this fear in Jessie's mind bred entirely by the feeling that it
+was her duty to look out for Henrietta. The child was an appealing
+little creature, though she had had little chance in the world thus far
+to develop her better and worthier qualities. The pity that Jessie
+Norwood had felt for the untamed girl at first was now blossoming into
+love.
+
+"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 headphones. 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 white 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 some time 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 and 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 off 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 girls 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 Caesar. 'Roman bath' is only a name."
+
+"Wrong! Not about Caesar'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 unaminity 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 portlight 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 fog-horn? 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----
+
+"Hi, you boys!" came the muffled voice of Skipper Pandrick from below,
+"couple on the pump-line and send the nozzle end below. There's
+something here, sure enough."
+
+As he said this another balloon of smoke floated up through the open
+hatch. It was seen from the station of the passengers. Darry jumped up
+and ran to the hatchway.
+
+"What's he doing? Smoking down there?" he demanded.
+
+"It's sure a bad cigar, boss, if he's smoking it," said one of the men,
+grinning.
+
+"Oh, Darry!" gasped Jessie. "The yacht is on fire!"
+
+"Nonsense!" exclaimed the young man, rather impolitely it must be
+confessed.
+
+He started to descend into the hold. The skipper's voice rose out of it:
+
+"Get away from there! This ain't any place for you, Mr. Darry. Hustle
+that pipe-line."
+
+"Is it serious, Skipper?" demanded the young collegian, anxiously.
+
+"I don't know how bad it is yet. Tell the helmsman to head nor'east.
+Maybe we'd better make for some anchorage, after all."
+
+Darry ran to the wheelhouse. The other passengers began to get excited.
+Nell ran to her father and told him what she had first discovered.
+
+"Well, having discovered the fire in time, undoubtedly they will be able
+to put it out," said Dr. Stanley, comfortingly.
+
+But this did not prove to be easy. Skipper Pandrick had to come up after
+a while for a breath of cool air and to remove his oilskins. Darry and
+Burd got into overalls and helped in handling the hose. The steam needed
+to work the pump, however, brought the engines down to a very slow
+movement. The _Marigold_ scarcely kept her headway.
+
+The fire, which had undoubtedly been smouldering a long time, was
+obstinate. The water the skipper and his helpers poured upon it raised
+the level of water in the bilge until Darry declared he feared the yacht
+would be water-logged.
+
+Meanwhile the wind grew in savageness. Instead of being gusty, it blew
+more and more violently out of the northeast. When the helmsman tried to
+head into it, under the skipper's relayed instructions by Darry, the
+lack of steam kept the old _Marigold_ marking time instead of forging
+ahead.
+
+"If we have to put the steam to the pump to clear the bilge after this,"
+grumbled the pessimistic Burd, "we'll never reach any shelter. Might as
+well run for the Bermudas."
+
+"Won't that be fine!" cried Amy. "I have always wanted to go to the
+Bermudas, and we've never gone."
+
+"Fine girl, you," retorted Burd. "You don't know when you are in
+danger."
+
+"Fire's out!" announced Amy. "The skipper says so. And I am not afraid
+of a capful of wind."
+
+There was more danger, however, than the girls imagined. The water that
+had been poured into the yacht's hold did not make her any more
+seaworthy. It was necessary to start the pump to try to clear the hold.
+
+The clapperty-clap; clapperty-clap! of the pump and the water swishing
+across the deck to be vomited out of the hawse holes was nothing to add
+to the passengers' feelings of confidence. Besides, the water came very
+clear, and at its appearance the skipper looked doleful.
+
+"What's the matter, Skipper?" asked Darry, seeing quickly that something
+was still troubling the old man.
+
+"Why, Mr. Darry, that don't look good to me, and that's a fact," the
+sailing master said.
+
+"Why not? The pump is clearing her fast."
+
+"Is it?" grumbled Pandrick, shaking his head.
+
+"Of course it is!" exclaimed Darry, with some exasperation. "Don't be an
+Old Man of the Sea."
+
+"That's exactly what I am, Mr. Darry," said the skipper. "I'm so old a
+hand at sea that I'm always looking for trouble. I confess it. And I see
+trouble--and work for all hands--right here."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Jessie, who chanced to be by. "The pump works
+all right just as Darry says, doesn't it?"
+
+"But, by gorry!" ejaculated the skipper, "it looks as though we were
+just pumping the whole Atlantic through her seams."
+
+"Goodness! What do you mean?" Jessie demanded.
+
+"You think she is leaking?" asked Darry, in some trouble.
+
+"Bilge ain't clean water like that," answered Pandrick. "That's as clear
+as the sea itself. Mind you! I don't say she leaks more'n enough to keep
+her sweet. But if those pumps don't suck purt' soon, I shall have my
+suspicions."
+
+"Darry!" ejaculated Jessie, "your yacht is falling apart. What are we
+going to do?"
+
+"I don't believe it," muttered Darry.
+
+He had, however, to admit it after a time. It seemed as though the
+_Marigold_ were suffering one misfortune after another. The fire, which
+might have been very serious, was extinguished; but the yacht lay deep
+in the troubled sea, rolling heavily, and the water pumped through the
+pipe was plainly seeping in through the seams of her hull.
+
+"Goodness me! shall we have to take to the boat and the life raft?"
+demanded Amy.
+
+It was scarcely possible to joke much about the situation. Even Amy
+Drew's "famous line of light conversation" could not keep up their
+spirits.
+
+The wind continued to blow harder and harder. The yacht could no longer
+head into it. Dr. Stanley looked grave. Nell, first frightened by her
+discovery of the fire in the hold, was now in tears.
+
+To add to the seriousness of the situation, there was not another vessel
+in sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII--A RADIO CALL THAT FAILED
+
+
+"Of course," Amy said composedly, "if worse comes to worst, we can send
+the news by radio that the yacht is sinking and bring to our rescue
+somebody--somebody----"
+
+"Yes, we can!" exclaimed Burd Alling. "A revenue cutter, I suppose?
+Don't you suppose the United States Government has anything better to do
+than to look out for people who don't know enough to look out for
+themselves?"
+
+"That seems to be the Government's mission a good deal of the time,"
+replied Dr. Stanley, with a smile. "But you don't think it will be
+necessary to call for help, do you, Darrington?" he asked the
+sober-looking owner of the yacht.
+
+"Well, the fire's out, that's sure----"
+
+"You bet it is!" growled Burd. "It had to be out, there's so much water
+in the hold."
+
+"But we are not sinking!" cried Amy.
+
+"Lucky we're not," said Burd. "The radio doesn't work."
+
+"Why, how you talk," Nell said admonishingly. "You would scare us if we
+did not know you so well, Burd."
+
+"You don't know the half of it!" exclaimed the young fellow. "Fuel is
+getting low, too. Skipper wants us to work the pump by hand. That means
+Darry and me to 'man the pumps.'"
+
+"And we can help," said Jessie, cheerfully. "If the skipper thinks he
+needs to make more steam for the engines, why can't we all take turns at
+the pump?"
+
+"Sounds like a real shipwreck story," her chum observed, but doubtfully.
+
+"It will cause a mutiny," declared Burd. "I didn't ship on the
+_Marigold_ to work like Old Bowser on the treadmill. And that is about
+how I feel."
+
+"You can get out and walk if you don't like it," Darry reminded him.
+
+"And I suppose you think I wouldn't. For two cents----"
+
+Just then the yacht pitched sharply and Burd almost lost his footing.
+The waves were really boisterous and occasionally a squall of rain
+swooped down and, with the spray, wet the entire deck and those upon it.
+
+Jessie was not greatly afraid of the elements or of what they could do
+to the yacht. But she was made anxious by the repetition of the
+statement that the radio was out of order. Originally the _Marigold_ had
+had a small wireless plant, with storage batteries. Signals by Morse
+could be exchanged with other ships and with stations ashore within a
+limited distance.
+
+But when Darry had bought the radio receiving set he had disconnected
+the broadcasting machine and linked up the regenerative circuit with the
+stationary batteries. As he had explained to Jessie, both systems could
+not be used at once.
+
+They had found that neither the receiving set nor the old wireless set
+worked well. It looked as though the boys had overlooked something in
+rigging the new set and the radio girls quite realized that in this
+emergency a general and perhaps a thorough overhauling of the wires and
+connections would be necessary to discover just where the fault lay.
+
+Jessie called Amy, and they went up into the little wireless room behind
+the wheelhouse where everything about the plant but the batteries were
+in place. This was a very different outfit from that in the great
+station at the old lighthouse on Station Island, which they had visited
+several days before.
+
+"If we only knew as much as that operator does about wireless," sighed
+Jessie to her chum, "there might be some hope of our untangling all this
+and finding out the trouble."
+
+"He said he had been five years at it and didn't know so very much," Amy
+reminded her dryly.
+
+"Oh, there will always be something new to learn about radio, of
+course," her chum agreed. "But if we had his training in the
+fundamentals of radio, we would be equipped to handle such a mess as
+this. To tell you the truth, Amy, I think these two boys have made a
+cat's cradle of this thing."
+
+"And Darry spent more than a year aboard a destroyer and was trained to
+'listen in' for submarines and all that!"
+
+"An entirely different thing from knowing how to rig wireless,"
+commented Jessie, getting down on her knees to look under the shelf to
+which the posts were screwed. "Oh, dear!" she added, as she bumped her
+head. "I wish this boat wouldn't pitch so."
+
+"So say we all of us. What can I do, Jess?"
+
+"Not a thing--for a moment. Let me see: The general rules of radio are
+easily remembered. The incoming oscillations that have been intercepted
+by the antenna above the roof of the house are applied across the grid
+and filament of the detector tube----"
+
+"That's this jigger here," put in Amy, as Jessie struggled up again.
+
+"Yes. That is the tube. Through the relay action of the tube, an
+amplified current flows through the plate circuit--_here_. Now," added
+Jessie thoughtfully, "if we couple this plate circuit back--No! This is a
+simple circuit. It is like our old one, Amy. We can't get much action
+out of this set. It is not like the new one we are putting in the
+bungalow."
+
+"Well, the thing is, can we use it?" Amy demanded. "Can you link the
+power, or whatever you call it, up with the sending paraphernalia and
+get an S O S over the water?"
+
+"Goodness, Amy! Don't talk as though you thought we were really in
+danger."
+
+"Humph! I see the Reverend, as Nell calls him, out there with his coat
+off, in his shirt-sleeves, taking a turn with Burd at the pumps. They
+have rigged it for man power and are saving steam for the engines."
+
+"Let me see!" cried Jessie, peering out of the clouded window too.
+"You'd never think he was a minister. Isn't he nice?"
+
+Amy began to laugh. "Are all ministers supposed to be such terrible
+people?"
+
+"No-o," admitted Jessie, going back to the radio set. "But good as they
+usually are, we have the very best minister at the Roselawn Church, of
+any."
+
+"Yep. So we must plan to save him if anything happens," giggled Amy.
+
+"Let's open the switch and see if we can get anything," her chum said
+reflectively, picking up the head harness.
+
+"You mean _hear_ if we can get anything," corrected Amy.
+
+"Never mind splitting hairs, my dear. Is that the switch? Yes. Now!"
+
+She put on the rigging, but all she got out of the air, as she sadly
+confessed, were sounds like an angry cat spitting at a puppydog.
+
+"It isn't just static," she told Amy. "You try it. There is something
+absolutely wrong with this thing. See! We don't get a spark."
+
+"If we did we couldn't read the letters."
+
+"I believe I could read some Morse if it came slowly enough," said
+Jessie, nodding. "But it is sending, not receiving, I am thinking of,
+Amy Drew."
+
+Amy began to look more serious. Jessie was harping on a possibility she
+did not wish to admit was probable. She went out and, hunting up Darry,
+demanded to know just how bad he thought they were off, anyway.
+
+"Well, Sis, there is no use making a wry face about it," the collegian
+said. "But you see how hard the Reverend and Burd are working, and they
+can't keep ahead of the water. The poor old _Marigold_ really is
+leaking."
+
+"Is she going to sink? Can't we get to land--somewhere? Can't we go back
+to the island?"
+
+"Shucks, Sis! You know we are miles from Station Island. We are off
+Montauk--or we were this morning. But we are heading out to sea
+now--sou'-sou'east. Can't head into this gale. She pitches too much."
+
+"And--and isn't there any help for us, Darry Drew?"
+
+"We don't need any help yet, do we?" he demanded pluckily. "She is
+making good weather of it----"
+
+Just then the yacht rolled so that he had to grab the rail with one hand
+and Amy with the other, and both of them were well shaken up.
+
+"Woof!" gasped Darry, as they came out of the smother of spray.
+
+"Oh!" exploded Amy. "I swallowed a pail of water that time. Ugh! How
+bitter the sea is. Now, Darry, I guess we'll have to send out signals,
+sha'n't we?"
+
+"How can we? I've tried the old radio already. She is as dumb as the
+proverbial oyster with the lockjaw."
+
+"Jessie is going to fix it," said Amy, with some confidence.
+
+"Yes she is! She's some smart girl, I admit," her brother observed. "But
+I guess that is a job that will take an expert."
+
+"You just see!" cried Amy. "You think she can't do anything because
+she's a girl."
+
+"Bless you! Girls equal the men nowadays. I hold Jessie as little less
+than a wonder. But if a thing can't be done----"
+
+"That is what you think because you tried it and failed."
+
+"Huh!"
+
+"We radio girls will show you!" declared Amy, her head up and preparing
+to march back to her chum the next time the deck became steady.
+
+But when she started so proudly the yacht rolled unexpectedly and Amy,
+screaming for help, went sliding along the deck to where Dr. Stanley and
+Burd were pumping away to clear the bilge. She was saturated--and much
+meeker in deportment--when Burd fished her out of the scuppers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII--ONLY HOPE
+
+
+The condition of the _Marigold_ was actually much more serious than the
+Roselawn girls at first supposed. Jessie and Amy were so busy in the
+radio house for a couple of hours and were so interested in what they
+were doing that they failed to observe that the hull of the yacht was
+slowly sinking.
+
+Fortunately the wind decreased after a while; but by that time it was
+scarcely safe to head the yacht into the wind's eye, as the skipper
+called it. She wallowed in the big seas in a most unpleasant way and it
+was fortunate indeed that all the passengers were good sailors.
+
+Nell came and looked into the radio room once or twice; then she felt so
+bad that she went below to lie down. The doctor worked as hard as any
+man aboard. And his cheerfulness was always infectious.
+
+The minister knew that they were in peril. He would have been glad to
+see a rescuing vessel heave into sight. But he gave no sign that he
+considered the situation at all uncertain or perilous in the least.
+
+The afternoon was passing. Another night on the open sea without knowing
+if the yacht would weather the conditions, was a matter for grave
+consideration. The doctor and Darry conferred with Skipper Pandrick.
+
+"'Tis hard to say," the sailing master observed. "There is no knowing
+what may happen. If the yacht was not so water-logged we might get in
+under our own steam----"
+
+"But we can't make steam enough!" cried Darry.
+
+"Well, no, we don't seem to," admitted the skipper.
+
+"And to what port would you sail?" asked Dr. Stanley.
+
+"Well, now, there's not any handy just now, I admit. If we head back for
+the land we may be thrown on our beam-ends, I will say. The waves are
+big ones, as you see."
+
+"You are not very encouraging, Skipper," said the minister.
+
+"I wouldn't be raising any false hopes in your mind, sir," said
+Pandrick.
+
+"You're a jolly old wet blanket, you are," declared Darry to the sailing
+master. "What shall we do?"
+
+"We'll have to take what comes to us," declared the skipper.
+
+"You are a fatalist, Mr. Pandrick," said the minister, and Darry was
+glad to hear him laugh cheerily.
+
+"No, sir. I'm a Universalist," declared the seaman. "And I've all the
+hope in the world that we'll come out of this all right."
+
+"But can't we do something to help ourselves?" demanded the exasperated
+Darry.
+
+"Not much that I know of. Here's hoping the wind goes down and we have
+calm weather and see the sun again."
+
+"Hope all you like," growled the young fellow. "I am going to see if the
+girls aren't able to bring something to pass with that radio."
+
+He found his sister and Jessie rearranging a part of the circuit on the
+set-board. They were very much in earnest. Thus far, however, they had
+been unable to get a clear signal out of the air, nor could they send
+one.
+
+"If we could reach another vessel, or a shore station, and tell them
+where the yacht is and that she is leaking, we'd be all right, shouldn't
+we, Darry?" Jessie asked earnestly.
+
+"But I am not at all sure we need help," he said, in doubt.
+
+"We may need it!" exclaimed his sister.
+
+"Why--yes, we may," he admitted, though rather grudgingly.
+
+"Then we want to get this fixed," Jessie declared. "But there is
+something wrong here. Do you see this Darry? It seems to me that there
+must be a part missing. When you and Burd set this up are you sure you
+followed the instructions of the book in every particular?"
+
+"Of course we did," Darry said.
+
+"Of course we didn't!" exclaimed Burd's voice from the doorway.
+
+"What are you saying?" demanded his friend, promptly.
+
+"What I know. Don't you remember that you lost the instruction book
+overboard sometime there, when we were getting the bothersome thing
+fixed?"
+
+"So I did," confessed Darry. "But, say! she was all right then."
+
+"She hasn't ever been all right," accused his chum, "and you know it."
+
+"We sent code signals by the old machine, all right."
+
+"But we've never been able to since we linked it up with this receiving
+set, and you know it," said Burd.
+
+"It sounds to me," said Amy, "as though neither one of you boys knew so
+awfully much about it."
+
+"I know one thing," said Jessie, with determination. "All the parts are
+not here. These connections are not like any I ever saw before. It is a
+mystery to me----"
+
+"Hold on!" exclaimed Darry Drew suddenly. "What did we do with all those
+little cardboard boxes and paper tubes the parts came in? Couldn't be we
+overlooked anything, Burd?"
+
+"Don't try to hang it on me!" exclaimed his chum. "I never claimed to
+know a thing about radio. You were the Big Noise when we put the
+contraption together."
+
+"Aw, you! Where did we put the things left over?"
+
+"There he goes!" exclaimed the confirmed joker. "He's like the fellow
+who took the automobile apart to fix it and had a bushel of parts left
+over when he was done. He doesn't know----"
+
+"Beat it out of here," roared Darry, "and find that box we put the stuff
+into. _You_ know."
+
+Dr. Stanley came up to the radio room while Burd was searching for the
+rubbish box. The clergyman spoke cheerfully, but he looked very grave.
+
+"Is there any likelihood of our being able to send out a call for
+assistance, Jessie?" he asked, quietly.
+
+"I don't see how we can, Doctor Stanley, until we fix this radio set. We
+can't get any spark. We have to be able to get a spark to send a
+message. The message will be stumbling enough, I am afraid, even if we
+fix the thing, for none of us understands Morse very well. Unless
+Darry----"
+
+"Don't look to me for help," declared the collegian. "I haven't sent a
+message since we put the yacht in commission. We had a fellow aboard
+here until the other day who knew something about wireless and he was
+the operator. Not me."
+
+"Amy and I have a code book with the alphabet in it," said Jessie
+slowly. "I think if somebody read the dots and dashes to me I could send
+a short message. But there is something wrong with this circuit."
+
+Just then Burd Alling came back. He brought with him a big corrugated
+cardboard container. In that the various parts of the radio outfit had
+been packed.
+
+"What do you think about it?" he asked. "There _is_ something here that
+I never saw before. See this jigamarig, Jess? Think it belongs on the
+contraption?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Jessie, eagerly, pouncing on the small object that Burd held
+out to her. "I know what that is."
+
+"Then you beat me. I don't," declared Burd.
+
+"Let's see what else there is," said Darry, diving into the box. "I left
+you to get out the parts, Burd; you know I did."
+
+"Oh, splash!" exclaimed his friend. "We might as well admit that we
+don't know as much about radio as these girls. They leave us lashed to
+the post."
+
+But Jessie and Amy did not even feel what at another time Amy would have
+called "augmented ego." The occasion was too serious.
+
+The day was passing into evening, and a very solemn evening it was. The
+wind whined through the strands of the wire rigging. The waves knocked
+the yacht about. The passengers all felt weary and forlorn.
+
+The two girl chums felt the situation less acutely than anybody else,
+perhaps, because they were so busy. That radio had to be repaired. That
+is what Jessie told Amy, and Amy agreed. The safety of the whole yacht's
+company seemed dependent upon what the two radio girls could do.
+
+"And we must not fall down on it, Jess," Amy said vigorously. "How goes
+it now?"
+
+"This thing that Burd found goes right in here. We have got to reset a
+good part of the circuit to do it. I don't see how the boys could have
+made such a mistake."
+
+"Proves what I have always maintained," declared Amy Drew. "We girls are
+smarter than those boys, even if the said boys do go to college. Bah!
+What is college, anyway?"
+
+"Just a prison," said Burd sepulchrally from the doorway.
+
+"Close that door!" exclaimed Jessie. "Don't let that spray drift in
+here."
+
+"Yes. Do go away, Burd, and see if the yacht is sinking any more. Don't
+bother us," commanded Amy.
+
+The men were keeping the pumps at work, but it was an anxious time. It
+was long dark and the lamps were lighted when Jessie pronounced the set
+complete. Darry and Burd came in again and asked what they could do?
+
+"Root for us. Nothing more," said Amy. "Jessie has fixed this thing and
+she is going to have the honor of sending the message--if a message can
+be sent."
+
+"Well," remarked Burd Alling, "I guess it is up to you girls to save the
+situation. I have just found out that there isn't as much provender as I
+was given reason to believe when we started. We ought to be in Boston
+right now. And see where we are!"
+
+"That is exactly what we can't see," said Jessie. "But we must know. Did
+you get the latitude and longitude from the skipper, Darry?"
+
+"Yes. Here it is, approximately. He got a chance to shoot the sun this
+noon."
+
+"The cruel thing!" gibed his sister. "But anyway, I hope he has got the
+situation near enough so some vessel can find us."
+
+"Let us see, first, if we can send a message intelligibly," said Jessie,
+putting on the head harness, and speaking seriously. "It will be awful,
+perhaps, if we can't. I know that the yacht is almost unmanageable."
+
+"You've said something," returned Burd. "The fuel is low, as well as the
+supplies in the galley. We haven't got much left----"
+
+"But hope," said Jessie, softly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV--THE MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE
+
+
+Henrietta Haney was a very lonely little girl after the yacht sailed
+from Station Island. Not that she had nobody to play with, for she had.
+There were other children besides Sally Stanley of her own age, or
+thereabout, in the bungalow colony. And as she had been in Dogtown,
+Henrietta soon became the leading spirit of her crowd.
+
+She even taught them some of her games, and once more became "Spotted
+Snake, the Witch," and scared some of the children almost as much as she
+had scared the Dogtown youngsters with her supposed occult powers.
+
+She was running and screaming and tearing her clothes most of the time
+when she was away from Mrs. Norwood, but in the company of Jessie's
+mother she truly tried to "be a little lady."
+
+"Be it ever so painful, little Hen is going to learn to be worthy of you
+and Jessie, Mary," laughed Mrs. Drew, who was like her daughter in being
+able always to see the fun in things. "What do you really expect will
+come of the child?"
+
+"I think she will make quite a woman in time. And before that time
+arrives," added Mrs. Norwood, "she has much to learn, as you say. In
+some ways Henrietta has had an unhappy childhood--although she doesn't
+know it. I hope she will have better times from now on."
+
+"You are sure to make her have good times, Mary," said Mrs. Drew. "I
+hope she will appreciate all that Jessie and you do for her."
+
+"She is rather young for one to expect appreciation from her," Mrs.
+Norwood said, smiling. "But the little thing is grateful."
+
+Without Jessie and Amy, however, Henrietta confessed she was very
+lonely. Sometimes she listened to the radio all alone, sitting quietly
+and hearing even lectures and business talks out of the air that
+ordinarily could not have interested the child. But she said it reminded
+her of "Miss Jessie" just to sit with the ear-tabs on.
+
+She had heard about the older girls going to the lighthouse station to
+interview the wireless operator there, and although Henrietta knew that
+the government reservation at that end of the island was no part of the
+old Padriac Haney estate, she wandered down there alone on the second
+day of the yacht's absence and climbed up into the tower.
+
+The storm had blown itself out on shore, and the sun was going down in
+golden glory. Out at sea, although the waves still rolled high and the
+clouds were tumultuous in appearance, there was nothing to threaten a
+continuation of the unsettled weather.
+
+Henrietta had no idea how long it would be before the yacht reached
+Boston, although she had heard a good deal of talk about it. She had
+watched the _Marigold_ steam out of sight into the east, and it seemed
+to the little girl that her friends were just there, beyond the horizon
+line, where she had seen the last patch of the _Marigold's_ smoke
+disappear.
+
+The wireless operator had seen Henrietta before, cavorting about the
+beach and leading the other children in their play, and he was prepared
+for some of her oddities. But she surprised him by her very first
+speech.
+
+"You're the man that can send words out over the ocean, aren't you?"
+
+"I can send signals," he admitted, but rather puzzled.
+
+"Can folks like Miss Jessie and Miss Amy hear 'em?" demanded Henrietta.
+
+"Only if they are on a boat that has a wireless outfit."
+
+"They got it on that _Marigold_," announced Henrietta.
+
+"Oh! The yacht that sailed yesterday! Yes, she carried antenna."
+
+"And she carried Doctor Stanley and Miss Nell Stanley, too, besides the
+boys, Mr. Darry and Mr. Burd," said Henrietta. "Then they can hear you?"
+
+"If they know how to use the wireless they could catch a signal from
+this station."
+
+"Miss Jessie knows all about radio," said Henrietta. "She made it."
+
+"Oh, she did?"
+
+"Yes. She made it all up. She and Miss Amy built them one at Roselawn.
+That was before Montmorency Shannon built his. Well, Miss Jessie is out
+there on the _Marigold_."
+
+"So I understand," said the much amused operator.
+
+"I wish you would--please--send her word that I'd like to have her come
+back to my island."
+
+"Are you the little girl who owns this island? I've heard about you."
+
+"Yes. But there ain't much fun on an island if your friends aren't on
+it, too. And Miss Jessie is one of my very dearest friends."
+
+"I understand," said the operator gravely, seeing the little girl's lip
+trembling. "You would like to have me reach your friend, Miss Jessie----"
+
+"Her name's Norwood, too," put in Henrietta, to make sure.
+
+"Oh, indeed? She is the lawyer, Mr. Norwood's daughter. I have met her."
+
+"Yes, sir. She came here once."
+
+"And you wish to send her a message if it is possible?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I want you should ask her to get to Boston as quick as she
+can and come back again. We would all like to have her come," said the
+little girl, gravely.
+
+"I am going to be on duty myself this evening and I will try to get your
+message through," said the operator kindly. "The _Marigold_, is it?" and
+he drew the code book toward him in which the signal for every vessel
+sailing from American ports, even pleasure craft, that carries wireless,
+is listed.
+
+He turned around to his instrument right then and began to rap out the
+call for the yacht. He kept it up, off and on, between his other work,
+all the evening. But no answer was returned.
+
+The operator began to be somewhat puzzled by this fact. Knowing how much
+interested in radio the girls were who had visited him, he could not
+understand why they would not be listening in at some time or other on
+the yacht.
+
+He kept throwing into the ether the signal meant for the _Marigold's_
+call until almost midnight, when he expected to be relieved by his
+partner. Towards ten o'clock there was some bothersome signals in the
+ether that annoyed him whenever he took a message or relayed one in the
+course of the evening's business.
+
+"Some amateur op. is interfering," was his expression. "But, I declare!
+it does sound something like this station call. Can it be----?"
+
+He lengthened his spark and sent thundering out on the air-waves his
+usual reply: "I, I, OKW. I, I, OKW."
+
+Then he held his hand and waited for any return. The same mysterious,
+scraping sounds continued. A slow hand, he believed, was trying to spell
+out some message in Morse. But it was being done in a very fumbling
+manner.
+
+Of course, half a dozen shore stations and perhaps half a hundred
+vessels might have caught the clumsy message, as well. But the operator
+at Station Island, interested by little Henrietta in the _Marigold_ and
+her company, felt more than puzzlement over this strange communication
+out of the air.
+
+"Listen in here, Sammy," he said to his mate, when the latter came in.
+"Is it just somebody's squeak-box making trouble to-night or am I
+hearing a sure-enough S O S? I wonder if there is a storm at sea?"
+
+"There is," said his mate, sitting down on the bench and taking up the
+secondary head harness. "The evening papers are full of it. Northeast
+gale, and blowing like kildee right now."
+
+"Arlington gave no particulars at last announcement."
+
+"Don't make any difference. The boats outside know it. Hullo! What's
+this? 'S-t-a-t-i-o-n I-s-l-a-n-d.' What's the joke? Somebody calling us
+without using the code letters?"
+
+"Don't know 'em, maybe," said the chief operator. "Set down what you get
+and see if it is like mine."
+
+The other did so. They compared notes. That strange message set both
+operators actively to work. One began swiftly to distribute over the
+Eastern Atlantic the news that a craft needed help in such and such a
+latitude and longitude. The other operator, without his hat, ran all the
+way to the bungalows to give Mr. Norwood and Mr. Drew some very serious
+news.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV--SAVED BY RADIO
+
+
+Jessie Norwood was not tireless. It seemed to her as though her right
+arm would drop off, she pressed the key of the wireless instrument so
+frequently. They had written out a brief call of distress, and finally
+she got it by heart so that Amy did not have to read her the dots and
+dashes.
+
+But it was a slow process and they had no way of learning if the message
+was caught and understood by any operator, either ashore or on board a
+vessel. Hour after hour went slowly by. The _Marigold_ was sinking. The
+pumps could not keep up with the incoming water; the fuel was almost
+exhausted and the engines scarcely turned over; the buffeting seas
+threatened the craft every minute.
+
+Dr. Stanley remained outwardly cheerful. Darry and the others took heart
+from the clergyman's words.
+
+"Tell you what," said Burd. "If we are wrecked on a desert island I
+shall be glad to have the doctor along. He'd have cheered up old
+Robinson Crusoe."
+
+As the evening waned and the sea continued to pound the hull of the
+laboring yacht the older people aboard, at least, grew more anxious. The
+young folks in the radio room chattered briskly, although Jessie called
+them to account once in a while because they made so much noise she
+could not be sure that she was sending correctly.
+
+Darry tried to relieve her at the key, but he confessed that he "made a
+mess of it." The radio girls had spent more time and effort in learning
+to handle the wireless than the collegians--both Darry and Burd
+acknowledged it.
+
+"These are some girls!" Darry said, admiringly.
+
+"You spoil 'em," complained Burd Ailing. "Want to be careful what you
+say to them."
+
+"Oh, if anybody can stand a little praise it is Jess and I," declared
+Amy, sighing with weariness.
+
+Nobody cared to turn in. The situation was too uncertain. The boys could
+be with the girls only occasionally, for they had to take their turn at
+the pumps. It had come to pass that nothing but steady pumping kept the
+yacht from sinking. They were all thankful that the wind decreased and
+the waves grew less boisterous.
+
+Towards midnight it was quite calm, only the swells lifted the
+water-logged yacht in a rhythmic motion that finally became unpleasant.
+Nell was ill, below; but the others remained on deck and managed to
+weather the nauseating effects of the heaving sea.
+
+Meanwhile, as often as she could, Jessie Norwood sent out into the air
+the cry for assistance. She sent it addressed to "Station Island," for
+she did not know that each wireless station had a code signal--a
+combination of letters. But she knew there was but one Station Island
+off the coast.
+
+The clapperty-clap, clapperty-clap of the pumps rasped their nerves at
+last until, as Amy declared, they needed to scream! When the sound
+stopped for the minute while pump-crews were changed, it was a relief.
+
+And finally the spark of the wireless began to skip and fall dead. Good
+reason! The storage batteries, although very good ones, were beginning
+to fail. Before daybreak it was impossible to use the sender any more.
+
+Somehow this fact was more depressing than anything that had previously
+happened. They could only hope, in any event, that their message had
+been heard and understood; but now even this sad attempt was halted.
+
+Jessie was really too tired to sleep. She and Amy did not go below for
+long. They changed their clothes and came on deck again and were very
+glad of the hot cup of coffee Dr. Stanley brought them from the galley.
+The cook had been set to work on one of the pump crews.
+
+The girls sat in the deck chairs and stared off across the rolling gray
+waters. There was no sign of any other vessel just then, but a dim rose
+color at the sea line showed where the sun would come up after a time.
+
+"But a fog is blowing up from the south, too," said Amy. "See that
+cloud, Jess? My dear! Did you ever expect that we would be sitting here
+on Darry's yacht waiting for it to sink under us?"
+
+"How can you!" exclaimed Jessie, aghast.
+
+"Well, that is practically what we are doing," replied her chum. "Thank
+goodness I have had this cup of coffee, anyway. It braces me----"
+
+"Even for drowning?" asked Jessie. "Oh! What is that, Amy?"
+
+"It's a boat! It's a boat! Ship ahoy!" shrieked Amy, jumping up and
+dancing about, dropping the cup and saucer to smash upon the deck.
+
+"It's a steamboat!" cried Darry Drew, from the deck above.
+
+"Head for it if you can, Bob!" commanded Skipper Pandrick to the
+helmsman.
+
+But before they could see what kind of craft the other was, the fog
+surrounded them. It wrapped the _Marigold_ around in a thick mantle.
+They could not see ten yards from her rail.
+
+"We don't even know if she is looking for us!" exclaimed Dr. Stanley.
+"That is too bad--too bad."
+
+"Whistle for it," urged Amy. "Can't we?"
+
+"If we use the little steam left for the whistle, we will have to shut
+down the engines," declared Darry.
+
+"This is a fine yacht--I don't think!" scoffed Burd Alling. "And none of
+you knows a thing about rescuing this boat and crew but me. Watch me
+save the yacht."
+
+He marched forward and began to work the foot-power foghorn vigorously.
+Its mournful note (not unlike a cow's lowing, as Jessie had said)
+reverberated through the fog. The sound must have carried miles upon
+miles.
+
+But it was nearly an hour before they heard any reply. Then the hoarse,
+brief blast of a tug whistle came to their ears.
+
+"_Marigold_, ahoy!" shouted a well-known voice across the heaving sea.
+
+"Daddy!" screamed Jessie, springing up and dropping _her_ cup and
+saucer, likewise to utter ruin. "It's Daddy Norwood!"
+
+The big tug wallowed nearer. She carried wireless, too, and the
+_Marigold's_ company believed, at once, that Jessie's message had been
+received aboard the _Pocahontas_.
+
+"But--then--how did Daddy Norwood come aboard of her?" Jessie demanded.
+
+This was not explained until later when the six passengers were taken
+aboard the tug and hawsers were passed from the sinking yacht to the
+very efficient _Pocahontas_.
+
+"And a pretty penny it will cost, so the skipper says, to get her towed
+to port," Darry complained.
+
+"Say!" ejaculated Burd, "suppose she didn't find us at all and we were
+paddling around in that boat and on the life raft? _That_ would take the
+permanent wave out of your hair, old grouch!"
+
+The girls, however, and Dr. Stanley as well, begged Mr. Norwood to
+explain how he had come in search of the _Marigold_ and had arrived so
+opportunely.
+
+"Nothing easier," said the lawyer. "When the operator at the lighthouse
+station got your message----"
+
+"Oh, bully, Jess! You did it!" cried Amy, breaking in.
+
+"Did you send that message, Jessie?" asked her father. "Well, I am proud
+of you. The operator came to the house and told me. Although his partner
+was sending the news of your predicament broadcast over the sea, he told
+me of the tug lying behind the island, and that it could be chartered.
+
+"So," explained Mr. Norwood, "I left Drew to fortify the women--and
+little Henrietta--and went right over and was rowed out to the
+_Pocahontas_ by an old fisherman who said he knew you girls. I believe
+he pronounced you 'cleaners,' if you know what that means," laughed the
+lawyer.
+
+"Henrietta, by the way, was doing incantations of some sort over the
+wind and weather when I left the bungalow. She said 'Spotted Snake'
+could bring you all safe home."
+
+"Bless her heart!" exclaimed Jessie.
+
+That afternoon when the tug worked her way carefully into the dock near
+the bungalow colony on Station Island, Henrietta was the first person
+the returned wanderers saw on the shore to greet them. She was dancing
+up and down and screaming something that Jessie and Amy did not catch
+until they came off the gangplank. Then they made the incantation out to
+be:
+
+"That Ringold one can't have my island--so now! The court says so, and
+Mr. Drew says so, too. He just got it off the telephone and he told me.
+It's my island--so there!"
+
+"Why, how glad I am for you, dear!" cried Jessie, running to hug the
+excited little girl.
+
+"Come ashore! Come ashore! All of you!" cried Henrietta, with a wide
+gesture. "I invite all of you. This is my island, not that Ringold's.
+You can come on it and do anything you like!"
+
+"Why, Henrietta!" murmured Jessie, as the other listeners broke into
+laughter. "You must not talk like that. I am glad the courts have given
+you your father's property. But remember, there are other people who
+have rights, too."
+
+"Say! That Ringold one--and that Moon one--haven't any prop'ty on this
+island, have they?" Henrietta demanded.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then that's all right," said the little girl with satisfaction. "I'll
+be good, Miss Jessie; oh, I'll be good!" and she hugged her friend
+again.
+
+"And don't call them 'that Ringold one' and 'that Moon one,' Henrietta.
+That is not pretty nor polite," admonished Jessie.
+
+"All right, if you say so, Miss Jessie. What you say goes with me. See?"
+
+It took some time, after they were at home, for everything to be talked
+over and all the mystery of the radio message to be cleared up. The
+interested operator from the lighthouse came over to congratulate Jessie
+on what she had done. After all, aside from the girl's addressing the
+station by name, the message had not been hard to understand. And
+considering the faulty construction of the yacht's wireless and the
+weakness of her batteries, Jessie had done very well indeed.
+
+The young people, of course, would have much to talk about regarding the
+adventure for days to come. Especially Darry. When he learned what he
+would have to pay for the towing in of the yacht and what it would cost
+to put in proper engines and calk and paint the hull, he was aghast and
+began to figure industriously.
+
+"Learning something, aren't you, Son?" chuckled Mr. Drew. "Your Uncle
+Will pretty near went broke keeping up the _Marigold_. But I will help
+you, for I am getting rather fond of the old craft, too."
+
+"We all ought to help," said Mr. Norwood. "I sha'n't want you to scrap
+the boat, Darry, my boy. I like to think that it was my Jessie saved her
+from sinking--and saved you all. To my mind radio is a great
+thing--something more than a toy even for these boys and girls."
+
+"Quite true," Mr. Drew agreed. "When your Jessie and my Amy first strung
+those wires at Roselawn I thought they were well over it if they didn't
+break their limbs before they got it finished. When we get back home I
+think Darry and I would better put up aerials and have a house-set, too.
+What say, Darry?"
+
+"I'm with you, Father," agreed the young collegian. "But I won't agree
+to rival Jess and Amy as radio experts. For those two girls take the
+palm."
+
+
+                                THE END
+
+
+                          PEGGY STEWART SERIES
+
+                        By GABRIELLE E. JACKSON
+
+                         Peggy Stewart at Home
+                        Peggy Stewart at School
+
+    Peggy, Polly, Rosalie, Marjorie, Natalie, Isabel, Stella and
+    Juno--girls all of high spirits make this Peggy Stewart series one of
+    entrancing interest. Their friendship, formed in a fashionable
+    eastern school, they spend happy years crowded with gay social
+    affairs. The background for these delightful stories is furnished by
+    Annapolis with its naval academy and an aristocratic southern
+    estate.
+
+
+                      The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
+                            NEW YORK, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+                             CLASSIC SERIES
+
+                                 Heidi
+                            By Johanna Spyri
+
+                            Treasure Island
+                       By Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+                              Hans Brinker
+                          By Mary Mapes Dodge
+
+                           Gulliver's Travels
+                           By Jonathan Swift
+
+                          Alice in Wonderland
+                            By Lewis Carroll
+
+    Boys and girls the world over worship these "Classics" of all times,
+    and no youth is complete without their imagination-stirring
+    influence. They are the time-tested favorites loved by generations
+    of young people.
+
+
+                      The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
+                            NEW YORK, N. Y.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMPFIRE GIRLS ON STATION
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