LUCILE'S QUICK ACTION GAS
You must not imagine (and you might well be forgiven for doing so, if you
have read the preceding chapters) that the experiences of the three girls
whose lives are pictured here were a series of closely crowded thrilling
adventures. It was not the case that no sooner was the curtain run down
on one mysterious happening than the stage was set for another. Few lives
are like that. Adventures do come to us all at times and we face them for
the most part bravely. Some amuse and entertain, others startle and
appall, but each teaches in its own way some new lesson of life.
Adventures taken from the lives of others bring to us the greatest ratio
of entertainment, but it is our own exciting and mysterious adventures
that we speak of most often when we are clustered on the deck of some
vessel or gathered about a camp fire.
While not many pages of this book may be devoted to the everyday school
life of these girls, they had it just the same. Florence and Lucile
strolled the campus as other girls strolled. They cut classes at times.
They passed difficult examinations with some credit. They reveled in the
grandeur of the architecture of the buildings of the university. They
thrilled at the thought that they were a part of the great throng that
daily swarmed from the lecture halls, and were somewhat downcast when
they came fully to realize their own insignificance when cast into such a
tossing sea of humanity.
Marian, the artist, also had her everyday rounds to make. She caught the
8:15 car downtown five days in the week to labor industriously with
charcoal and brush. She saw her Alaskan sketches, which had been praised
so often and so highly, picked to pieces by the ruthless criticism of a
competent teacher, but she rallied from her first disappointment to
resolve for better work in the future. She began to plan how this might
be accomplished.
Florence, Marian and Lucile were plain, ordinary, normal girls, yet in
one respect they were different from others; at least Lucile and Marian
were from the first, and Florence, being the strongest, most physically
capable of them all, soon caught their spirit. They had about them a
certain fearless outlook on life which is nearly always found in those
who have spent many months in the far North--an attitude which seems to
say, "Adventure and Trouble, I have met you before. I welcome you and
will profit by and conquer you."
Two or three rather ordinary incidents in their life on board the O Moo
prove that the life they lived there was, on the whole, a very simple,
normal life, yet they also illustrate the indisputable fact that the
simplest matters in the world, the casting of a tin can off a boat for
instance, may be connected with some interesting and thrilling adventure.
As to that particular tin can, Marian bought it at a grocery store along
with twenty-three other cans, filled with some unknown contents and sold
at the ridiculously low price of eight cents per can. The reason that the
price was so low and the contents unknown was that the labels had, during
the process of handling, been accidentally torn off. The cans had been
sent on to the retailer and were sold in grab-bag lots of two dozen each.
"You see," the obliging grocer had explained, "there may be only corn or
peas in them. Very well, they are even then worth twelve cents a can at
the very least. But then again there may be blackberries in thick syrup,
worth thirty or forty cents a can. Then what a bargain!"
"Well, girls," Marian exclaimed when she had finished telling of her
bargain and they of exclaiming over it, "what shall we have for dinner
to-night? Loganberries in thick syrup or sliced pineapple?"
"Oh, pineapple by all means!" Florence exclaimed.
"Good enough for me," smiled Lucile.
"All right. Here goes." Marian stabbed one of the unknown quantities with
the can-opener, then applied her nose to the opening.
"Corn!" she exclaimed in disgust.
"Oh, well," consoled Florence, "we can eat corn once. Lucile doesn't care
for it, but she can have something else. Here's a bowl; pour it out in
that. Then open the loganberries. They'll do."
Again the can-opener fell. Again came the disgusted exclamation, "Corn!"
Lucile giggled and Florence danced a hornpipe of joy. "That's one on you,
Marian, old dear," she shouted. "Oh, well, just give us plain peaches.
They'll do."
"Here's one that has a real gurgly sound when you shake it," said Lucile,
holding a can to her ear and shaking hard. "I think it's strawberries."
When Marian opened that can and had peered into it, she said never a word
but, walking to the cabin door, pitched it, contents and all, over the
rail and down to the crusted snow twenty feet below. There it bounced
about for a time, spilled its contents upon the ground, then lay quite
still, a new tin can glistening in the moonlight. But watch that can. It
is connected with some further adventure.
"Corn! Corn! Corn!" chanted Marian in a shrill voice breaking with
laughter. "And what a bargain."
"But look what I drew!" exclaimed Lucile, pointing to a can she had just
opened.
"Pineapple! Sliced pineapple!" the others cheered in unison. Then the
three cans of corn were speedily forgiven. But the empty can lay blinking
in the moonlight all the same.
The other affair, which occurred a few days later, might have turned into
a rather serious matter had it not been for Lucile's alert mind.
Lucile had what she styled a "bug" for creating things. "If only," she
exclaimed again and again, "I could create something different from
anything that has been created before I know I should be supremely happy.
If only I could write a real story that would get into print, or discover
some new chemical combination that would do things, that would be
glorious."
From these words one is not long in concluding that Lucile was
specializing in English and chemistry.
The yacht afforded her exceptional opportunities to pursue her study of
chemistry out of regular school hours, for Dr. Holmes, who devoted much
time to delving into the mysteries of organic chemistry, had installed in
a triangular space at the back of the cabin a perfectly equipped
laboratory. Here, during the days of the summer tour, he spent much of
his time. This laboratory he turned over to Lucile, the only provision
being that she replace test-tubes, retorts and other instruments broken
during the course of her experiments.
Here on many a stormy afternoon, and often long into the night, she
worked over a blue flame, concocting all manner of fluids and gases not
required by the courses she was taking.
"If only I could create--_create_!" she whispered to herself over and
over. "Memory work I hate. Imitation I like only because it tells me what
has been done and helps me to discover what has not been done. But to
create--Oh--Oh!" She would at such times grip at her breast as if her
heart were paining her at the very excitement of the thought.
On one particular afternoon, she did create something--in fact she
created a great deal of excitement.
She had taken down a formula which Dr. Holmes had left in a notebook.
"Looks interesting," she whispered to herself. She had worked herself up,
that day, to a feverish heat, to a point where she would dare anything.
As she read a closely written notation beneath the formula, her eyes
widened. "It is interesting," she exclaimed. "Tremendous! I'll make it.
Wouldn't dare try it on anyone, though."
"Better have a gas mask," she told herself after a moment's thought.
Digging about in a deep drawer she at last took out a strange canvas bag
with a windpipe-like attachment. This she hung upon a peg while she
selected the particular vials needed.
After that she drew the gas mask over her head and plunged into the work.
"Ten grains," she murmured; "a fluid ounce; three drams; three fluid
ounces; heat this in a beaker; add two drams--"
So she went on mumbling to herself in her excitement, like some witch in
a play.
"Too bad! Too bad! Won't hold it," she mumbled at last, after waiting for
her concoction to cool. "Won't go in one vial. Have to use two."
Having filled one thin glass vial and closed it with a glass-stopper, she
was in the act of filling the second when the half-filled vial slipped
from her hand and went crashing to the tile floor.
"Oh! Help!" she uttered a muffled scream, and, before she realized what
she was doing, threw the door leading into the main cabin wide open.
Before her, regarding her in great astonishment, were Marian and
Florence. For a few seconds they stood there, then of a sudden they began
to act in the most startling manner. Jumping up and down, waving their
arms, laughing, screaming, they vaulted over tables, knocked chairs
end-over-end and sent books and papers flying in every direction.
Having recovered her power of locomotion, Lucile dashed for the outer
door. This she flung wide open. Then, watching her chance, she propelled
her two delirious, dancing companions out into the open air.
There, for a moment, she was obliged to cling to them lest they throw
themselves over the rail, to go crashing to the frozen earth below.
In another moment it was all over. The two wild dancers collapsed,
crumpling up in heaps on the deck.
"Oh, girls, I'm so sorry. I really truly am." Lucile's mortification was
quite complete, in spite of the fact that she was fairly bursting with a
desire to laugh.
"What--what--made us do that?" Florence stammered weakly.
"Gas, a new gas," answered Lucile. Then, seeing the look of consternation
on the girls' faces, she hastened to add, "It's perfectly harmless;
doesn't attack the tissues; works on the motor nerves like laughing-gas
only it gets all the muscles excited, not just those of the face."
"Well, I'll say," remarked Marian, "you really created something."
"I only wish I had," said Lucile regretfully, "but that chances to be a
formula worked out by Dr. Holmes. I merely mixed it up. The bottle
slipped from my hand and smashed on the floor--I didn't aim to try it out
on you."
After the cabin had been thoroughly aired, the three girls went back to
their work. As Lucile put the laboratory in order she noted the vial
containing the remainder of the strange fluid. Having labeled it, "Quick
action gas," she put it away on the shelf, little dreaming that she would
find an unusual use for it later.
It was two weeks after Lucile's mysterious experience in the old Mission
building. Things had settled down to the humdrum life of hard work and
faithful study. On Saturday night two girls from the university
dormitories skated down the lagoon and walked down the beach to spend the
evening at the "ship," as they called it.
They were jolly Western girls. The five of them spent a pleasant evening
popping corn, pulling candy and relating amusing incidents from their own
lives. At eleven the visitors declared that they must go home.
"Wait, I'll go a piece with you," suggested Florence, reaching for her
skates.
At the end of the lagoon the three put on their skates. Florence's were
on first, for she wore a boyish style which went on with a clamp.
Gliding out on the ice, she struck out in a wide circle, then returned to
the others. Just as they came gliding out to meet her, she fancied she
caught a movement in the branches of some shrubs at the left which grew
down to the edge of the ice. For a second her eyes rested there, then she
was obliged to turn about to join her companions.
It was a glorious night; the skating was wonderful. Keen air caressed
their cheeks as they shot over the glistening surface to the tune of
ringing steel. Little wonder she forgot the moving bushes in the joy of
the moment.
Florence was a born athlete. Tipping the scale at one hundred and sixty,
she carried not a superfluous ounce of fat. Four hours every day she
spent on the gym floor or in the swimming pool. She was equipping herself
for the work of a physical culture teacher and took her task seriously.
She believed that most girls could be as strong as boys if they willed to
be, and she proceeded to set a shining example.
It was on her return trip that she was reminded of the moving bushes.
Catching the distant ring of skates, she saw a person dressed in a long
coat of some sort coming rapidly toward her.
The channel where they would meet was narrow. Some instinct told her to
turn back, to circle the island and to reach the nearest point to the
yacht that way. Whirling about, she set herself going rapidly in the
other direction.
"Now that was a foolish thing to do," she told herself. "Probably someone
saving a long walk by putting on his skates, same as I'm doing. Might
embarrass him to have me turn about that way."
She was getting in some long, strong strokes now. There were few who
could gain on her when she chose to exert herself.
She rounded the point of the island with a swift curve, then went
skimming down the other side. Without further thought of the lone skater,
she was nearing her goal and had gone into a long slide when, of a sudden
the clip-clip of skates again came to her ears. It was hardly necessary
for her to turn about to make sure that the stranger in the long coat had
also rounded the island.
For a second she glided on, uncertain what course to take. It was nearing
midnight. She was alone on the lagoon, a long way from any habitation. A
stranger was following her; why, she could not tell. To throw off her
skates and gain the bank before he came up was impossible. She decided,
without being greatly alarmed about it, again to circle the island and,
if necessary, take a spin the whole length of the lagoon.