CAN WE GO TO THE RESCUE?
Several days had passed since Madge and Phil had returned. A big fire
roared up the chimney. Madge lay on a blanket spread over some hemlock
boughs in one corner of the room. Phil sat near her, feeding the fawn
from a cup with a spoon.
Miss Jenny Ann had an open book in her lap, while Eleanor peered over
her shoulder. A single candle burned near them. Lillian sat by the
fire. Every now and then she threw an armful of pine cones on the fire
to make more light in the room.
Miss Jenny Ann was trying to instruct four of her pupils from "Miss
Tolliver's Select School for Girls" in the intricacies of algebraical
problems.
Since the disappointing trip to the opposite shore of the island Madge
had not been well. The sunshine had faded. The cold autumn rains had
begun. The food in the larder, supplied from the houseboat, had grown
perilously low. It was hard work to spend many hours in hunting or in
fishing in such weather. Nuts had commenced to pall as an article of
daily diet. Fight as they might, the spirit of the houseboat party had
begun to sink toward zero.
Suppose, after all, thought they, that they should not be rescued, even
by the first Monday in November, when Madge assured them the duck
shooting began? Perhaps there would not be any ducks this year, or else
no one would come to shoot them? There was nothing too dreadful to
imagine!
Instead of being comforted by Madge's and Phil's report that they were
not alone on the island, Miss Jenny Ann was the more uneasy. She did
not believe that such a man as the girls had seen would help them to
leave this island.
Miss Jenny Ann had been trying to beguile the tedium of the stormy days
by interesting the girls in the lessons they would even now have been
studying at Miss Tolliver's school if their houseboat had not sailed
away from her anchorage. All the old school books had been brought up
from the "Merry Maid." At first the girls were much pleased with Miss
Jenny Ann's idea. Eleanor declared that it would be splendid not to be
behind their classes when they returned to school that fall.
To-night, however, it was quite impossible to take a proper interest in
algebraical problems, when each member of the little group had such a
serious individual problem staring her in the face. It did not look as
though they were likely to return to Miss Tolliver's in the immediate
future.
"A penny for your thoughts, girls," remarked Miss Jenny Ann suddenly.
"Eleanor, dear, I am going to begin with you. We are all in the dumps
to-night. Perhaps it will cheer us up to tell one another our
thoughts."
Eleanor shook her head. She had been pretending to look over Miss
Jones's shoulder, but her eyes were really full of tears.
"Don't begin with me," she pleaded. "My thoughts wouldn't cheer anybody
up."
But the girls were firm. Eleanor must tell them.
"Oh, very well," she agreed. "I was thinking of 'Forest House' and
Mother and Father. I could smell Aunt Dinah's light rolls browning in
the kitchen oven, and the ham broiling, and----"
"Oh, please stop, Nellie!" begged Madge huskily.
But Eleanor would not stop. "I was wondering if Mother and Father
believed now that Madge and I were drowned!"
Eleanor dropped her head. There was a dreadful silence in the room that
made Miss Jenny Ann realize that the girls were near to breaking down.
"What were you thinking of, Madge?" she demanded in desperation. Madge
could usually be depended on to cheer the other girls.
The little captain shook her head despondently. "I was thinking of my
father," she answered, almost under her breath. "I was wishing that I
could find him, and that he would take me home."
"Lillian, what are you dreaming about to-night?" Miss Jones questioned
next.
Lillian glanced plaintively into the fire. She popped a particularly
fat kernel of a walnut in her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully before
she replied. Then, still picking at her nuts with a hairpin, she
confessed: "I was thinking, Miss Jenny Ann, that, if once I got back
home, I would never, never eat another nut, not even at Christmas."
The girls forgot their woes and shouted with laughter.
Phil stroked her little fawn gently. She glanced up and surveyed her
four friends squarely. Her face wore its most serious and determined
expression.
"I have been thinking, Miss Jenny Ann, that it is about time for us to
leave the island," she announced.
"My dear Phil, how original you are!" broke in Eleanor, with a pettish
gesture.
But Miss Jenny Ann looked straight at Phyllis. She knew that Phil meant
something more than mere idle talk by her speech. Evidently she had
been considering the situation.
"You see, we have had a wonderful time. Except for our worry about our
families we have had the very jolliest lark of our lives. But now we
must go back home."
Phil clasped her hands together and closed her lips. "I mean that we
must spend every single minute of our time and thought in arranging to
get away from here."
"What are we to do, Phil?" asked Madge. "We have already tried every
method."
"For one thing, we must find some better way to signal passing ships at
sea. They must be going by this island constantly, only they do not
come near enough to see us. Sometimes I believe we will just have to go
aboard the 'Merry Maid' again and drift out from shore," concluded
Phil.
Eleanor shivered. "We would be taking too great a chance."
"I wasn't advising it, Nellie. I was just thinking that we might have
to do it, if we can't get away by any other means. We would be almost
sure to meet a ship. Of course, we could never be on the water as long
a time as we were before without being seen. The other time it was just
a strange accident, due to the storm and the fog, I suppose."
The girls and Miss Jenny Ann frowned thoughtfully. Somehow Phil's idea
did not seem to be very pleasing.
It was just such a night as the one on which the pretty houseboat had
been cut adrift. The room was still, except for the crackling of the
fire. The noises were all on the outside. The owls hooted dismally in
the near-by trees. Farther off in the forest sounded the screech of a
wildcat. The rain poured down.
A sudden, violent knocking began on the front door of the lodge. It was
uncanny--terrifying. Not a single time since the houseboat party came
to the lodge in the woods had a hand knocked at their door. To-night,
in the heart of a storm, the sound of the blows upon the door filled
them with dread.
Miss Jenny Ann rose with shaking knees. Instead of opening the door she
quietly pushed her chair against it. It was a feeble barrier. The door
was closed only by a wooden latch, which Phil had made.
The banging continued. "Who's there?" Miss Jenny Ann demanded.
There was no reply. Phil came over and stood by her chaperon's side.
"Tell us who it is at the door and we will open to you. We can not open
to a stranger," she declared.
Still the stupid beating on the door with no response to the
questioning.
Phyllis stood close to the door. "Come here, Madge," she whispered.
"Now listen." The two girls were quiet as mice. One nodded to the
other. They had each heard a curious guttural sound outside their lodge
door.
"It's the deaf and dumb boy, Miss Jenny Ann. Shall we let him come in?"
asked Madge.
Miss Jones nodded, and Phil unlatched the door. In the same instant
Madge slipped her revolver into her hand, but she kept it hidden behind
her skirts.
The boy came slowly into the room, blinking at the light after the
darkness of the woods outside. He was wet to the skin and shaking with
cold. He gave a grunt of delight at the sight of the fire, then crossed
and stood before it, warming his outstretched hands. As though
frightened, the lad looked furtively from one young woman to the other.
Five minutes passed. The deaf and dumb lad made no explanation of his
surprising visit. It was impossible to ask him why he had come. The
houseboat party stared at him in perplexity. The boy stared back again.
He was completely fascinated by the beauty of the room and the circle
of pretty girls. He had apparently forgotten his errand.
Finally Madge grew tired of waiting for him to make a sign. Surely this
wild gypsy boy had not come to their lodge on such a night just to make
them a social call. How could she get any information out of him?
With a sudden inspiration she handed the lad a pencil and a piece of
paper. Perhaps the boy had some education. Madge printed in large
letters the simple words, "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" She handed the slip to
the youth.
He puzzled over it for a moment. Then his face lit up happily. He
pulled out of his pocket a crumpled piece of paper and handed it to
Madge.
Madge surveyed it gingerly, turning the paper first on one side, then
on the other. "The boy is an idiot," she announced positively. "Else
why should he have come over here on such a night with this dirty scrap
of paper? It hasn't a word written on it." Madge tossed the paper to
the ground contemptuously.
The lad made a rush for it. This time he passed it to Phil. He ran his
finger along some smudges on the paper.
"Wait, Phil," Miss Jenny Ann suggested, coming toward her with the
candle. Phil held up the paper and Miss Jenny Ann put the candle close
to it. Five pairs of eyes surveyed it at different ranges.
Written apparently with the finger, in coffee, was the solitary word,
"HELP." Below were some indefinite initials, a J, and an N, and a T.
This call out of the darkness was uncanny. From whom could it have
come? Madge and Phyllis knew that it must have been sent by the man who
was shut up in the house on the farther side of the island.
The girls looked at one another questioningly. "What can we do, Miss
Jenny Ann?" asked Phil anxiously.
"Nothing," Miss Jenny Ann responded in a tone that was final.
"Please allow us to write a note, then, and send it back by this boy?"
pleaded Madge. "Think how dreadful to be shut up somewhere without a
sign from the outside world. I'll just say that we are sorry we can not
come to rescue this person, as we have no way of helping him, and that
we don't know who he is. It wouldn't be any harm to say that we hope
some one else will come to save him, would it, Phil?"
Miss Jenny Ann smiled over Madge's letter, but offered no objection to
it.
The boy seemed quite satisfied. Just as he turned to leave, Phyllis
called him back.
It occurred to her that she might ask the lad some questions about the
mysterious prisoner whom he was trying to befriend, probably at the
risk of his own life.
Phil wrote the word, "MAN?" The boy nodded. Then she put down, "OLD?"
The youth shook his head violently.
"Ask the boy if the man is crazy, Phil."
Phil printed the word, "crazy," but the boy did not understand. The
word was too large to be included in his vocabulary. She tried, "mad,"
and he bowed his head repeatedly. He frowned, walked up and down the
room and stamped his foot.
Even Miss Jenny Ann smiled. "I am afraid we do not know whether the
prisoner is insane or just very angry," she said. "But, whoever he is,
we certainly have no concern with him. I don't wish to be unkind, but,
children, it seems to me that at present we have troubles enough of our
own."
And so the strange messenger was sent back to the unknown prisoner with
nothing save the regrets of the houseboat party.