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 Alling. “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
The Barton Books for Girls
By MAY HOLLIS BARTON
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or Laura Mayford’s City Experiences
Laura was the oldest of five children and when daddy got sick she felt she must do something. She had a chance to try her luck in New York, and there the country girl fell in with many unusual experiences.
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Billie Bradley Series
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Billie Bradley fell heir to an old homestead that was unoccupied and located far away in a lonely section of the country. How Billie went there, accompanied by some of her chums, and what queer things happened, go to make up a story no girl will want to miss.
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3. BILLIE BRADLEY ON LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND or The Mystery of the Wreck
One of Billie’s friends owned a summer bungalow on Lighthouse Island, near the coast. The school girls made up a party and visited the Island. There was a storm and a wreck, and three little children were washed ashore. They could tell nothing of themselves, and Billie and her chums set to work to solve the mystery of their identity.
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How the Linger-Not girls met and formed their club seems commonplace, but this writer makes it fascinating, and how they made their club serve a great purpose continues the interest to the end, and introduces a new type of girlhood.
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A story of the True Tred Troop in a Pennsylvania town. Two runaway girls, who want to see the city, are reclaimed through troop influence. The story is correct in scout detail.
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Nora Blair is the pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. Her dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem for the girls to solve.
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Showing how Jessie Norwood and her chums became interested in radiophoning, how they gave a concert for a worthy local charity, and how they received a sudden and unexpected call for help out of the air. A girl wanted as witness in a celebrated law case disappears, and the radio girls go to the rescue.
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3. THE RADIO GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND or The Wireless from the Steam Yacht
In this volume the girls travel to the seashore and put in a vacation on an island where is located a big radio sending station. The big brother of one of the girls owns a steam yacht and while out with a pleasure party those on the island receive word by radio that the yacht is on fire. A tale thrilling to the last page.
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The Radio Girls spend several weeks on the shores of a beautiful lake and with their radio get news of a great forest fire. It also aids them in rounding up some undesirable folks who occupy the strange hut in the swamp.
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