A FORTUNATE FIND.
The lighthouse keeper’s hut was well furnished and provisioned, and
they partook of a good meal. While they ate, enjoying to the full the
hot coffee and crisp bacon with which their host served them, they
listened to his tale of his life.
He had been an orange grower in Florida, but a frost had wiped out
all his plantation in a single night. A ruined man, he was compelled
to seek any sort of employment, and through a friend had secured a
position as assistant keeper at this lonely lighthouse. The name of the
island on which the boys had landed was Nacassa, and it was one of the
most easterly of the Bahama group.
The light had been placed on Nacassa by the British government, to
whom all the Bahama Islands belong, to warn ships of the dread Nacassa
reefs, which, it appeared, were once celebrated for the annual harvest
of wrecked ships they gathered in.
By the time the keeper had concluded his story the boys had finished
eating, and Jack declared that he was ready to see if he could find out
what ailed the light.
They entered the tower by a small door and began climbing winding
stairs that coiled round and round inside the narrow limits of the
lighthouse. At last they reached the top. The light was run by a
clockwork mechanism, which, in its turn, was operated by weights which
were drawn to the top of the tower every day. It was their gradual
descent during the night that made the clockwork run and the light
revolve.
Jack examined the machinery with interest. He wound up the weights
and carefully listened to the “click-click” of the mechanism as they
descended. He was puzzled to locate what was wrong for a while, but
at last he found it. Like most such troubles it was a very small one,
which was just what made it so hard to find.
A screw head had worked loose and allowed a cogwheel to shift. This is
what had caused the whole trouble. With a screwdriver and a new screw
Jack soon had the mechanism running as well as ever.
“And so that’s all that was the matter with it,” cried the man of
the tower. “Why, I could have fixed that myself, and I don’t know a
monkey-wrench from a handsaw. I guess, though, it’s like Columbus’s egg
trick—easy when you know how, and blamed hard when you don’t.”
“Perhaps that’s it,” said Jack, with an enigmatic smile. He knew, but
didn’t say so, that only long experience and a deft hand for mechanics
had enabled him to locate the trouble at all, it was such a very
obscure one.
“At any rate, I’m ever so grateful to you lads,” the man said
fervently. “How to thank you, though, I don’t just know.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Jack. “The best way you could repay for
any help we have been fortunate enough to give you, would be to tell us
some way to find our friends.”
The man puckered his brow in thought. The boys had told him their
story, and he was really anxious to help them. What with Jack’s
mechanical skill and his clever handling of the boat, the assistant
keeper’s admiration for the lad was tremendous.
“Tell you what,”, began the keeper suddenly, but he broke off abruptly
again.
“No, that wouldn’t do, either,” he concluded, shaking his head.
“What wouldn’t do?” asked Jack.
“We’ll try anything, however impossible it seems,” struck in Tom.
“Well, but neither of you kids could work wireless?” demanded the man.
“Wireless! Why, that’s my middle name. Have you got one on the island?”
“Sure. Dick Fennell, that’s my mate, he installed one by way of amusing
himself. I don’t know how good he is at it, but he’s got a likely
looking set of doo-dads and things.”
The boys could hardly keep from bounding down the spiral stairway three
steps at a time.
“Here’s a bit of luck,” exclaimed Jack, “if only that wireless is
working we may be able to get into communication with the _White
Shark_.”
Yes, if she’s on the surface,” rejoined Tom, who, as has been seen,
was somewhat of a pessimist.
“Oh, she’s sure to be,” rejoined Jack, “I’ll bet they’re cruising
about looking for us now. By the way,” he broke off, addressing the
lightkeeper, “is there any sort of an ocean current that sets toward
this island?”
“Yes, there’s the Great Bahama current that would land you here if you
drifted from the northward.”
“Depend upon it then, Tom, it was just as I thought, a current that
separated us from our friends,” said Jack as they descended the stairs
_en route_ for the wireless plant of the senior lightkeeper.
It was odd that they had not observed the web-like aërials before, for
now that Zeb Carter, the assistant, pointed them out, they were plain
enough, stretched between the lighthouse itself and a dead palm tree.
The room which housed the instruments was more of a rough shed than
anything else, and was roofed with palm leaves.
Carter pulled a rubber cloth, designed to keep the instruments from
moisture, off the table that held them. The boys regarded the set
approvingly. It was a powerful one of the latest type. Evidently
Fennell had not stinted himself on the price of his hobby.
Power was furnished from a dynamo run by a small gasoline engine.
Fennell, so Carter said, had complained of trouble with this engine.
Before starting it, therefore, Jack looked it over. He soon located the
trouble—in the timer—and adjusted it. Then he started the engine. Soon
the dynamo began to buzz loudly.
“Now then, I guess we’re all ready,” said Jack.
He sat himself down at the sending lever, first setting the switch,
and then began sending out the submarine’s secret call.
“_W-S! W-S! W-S!_”
The spark crackled and blazed as it leaped across its terminals, but
that was the only sound in the place except the distant roar of the
surf. Again and again, for half an hour or more, Jack continued to
call, stopping every now and then to adjust his receiver and listen for
a reply.
Once he caught an answer, but it was only a steamer on her way to the
West Indies.
Suddenly Jack gave a cry of triumph.
“What a double-dyed idiot I am!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t even had the
sense to adjust this instrument to the same wave lengths as those of
the _White Shark’s_ set!”
Bending forward, he quickly made the necessary adjustments in the
condenser. Then once more he sent the call vibrating into the caverns
of space.