THE REAL CRUISE BEGINS
Next morning Florence was skating down the lagoon, deep in thoughts of
the mysterious events of the past few days. So deeply engrossing were
these thoughts that she did not see what lay before her. Suddenly her
skate struck some solid obstacle. She tripped, then went sprawling. Her
loosened skate shot off in another direction.
"That's queer," she murmured as she sat up rubbing her knees.
Glancing back over the way she had come, she saw nothing more than a
circular raised spot which had formed when water had sprung up through a
hole in the ice.
"That's strange," she mused, and rising, she hopped and glided back to
the spot.
"Someone must have cut a hole in the ice," she reflected, "though what
they'd do it for is more than I can see. We youngsters used to do that to
get a drink when we were skating on a little prairie pond, a long way
from nowhere. But here the ice is fourteen inches thick and there's a
drink of water to be had for the asking up at the skate house."
As she glanced down at the spot, another strange circumstance surprised
her. "What makes that spot look so much bluer than the other ice?" she
asked herself.
As she examined it more closely she saw that this patch of blue had a
very definite outline, but rough and jagged, like the edges of a piece of
cloth haggled by a child who is just learning to use a pair of scissors.
Having recaptured her fugitive skate, she clamped it to her foot and was
about to go on her way when another startling fact arrested her.
"Why, that," she thought, "is just about where that man was sitting last
night; the one Marian and I saw who had apparently dropped in from
nowhere."
So struck with the discovery was she that she skated over to the edge of
the ice where the sled drawn by the two strangers had left the snow.
There she took good notice of the direction in which the sled had been
going when it came upon the ice.
Turning about, she skated backward with her eyes on the track made by the
sled runners. She was endeavoring to retrace the sled over the ice where
no tracks were visible, in an effort to prove that the sled had arrived
at the point on the ice where the hole had been cut when it turned and
struck off at another angle.
So successful was she in this that she all but fell over the rise in the
ice a second time.
"That's that," she murmured. "Now for something else."
Skating rapidly to the end of the lagoon nearest the dry dock she
circulated about until she discovered the spot at which the sled had left
the ice.
Again guiding herself by the course taken by the sled, she skated
backward and in a short time found herself once more beside the spot in
the ice where the hole had been cut.
"That proves something," she told herself, "but just how much I can't
tell. But I'll leave that to study out to-night. Must hurry on or I'll be
late to my lecture."
"That sled track went toward the dry dock," she told herself a few
moments later. "To-night when I go home I'll try to trace it out and see
where it went."
Lucile was home early that day. Marian had not gone to school at all. She
had stayed on the beach making sketches of the ice-jam on the lake front.
"I'll be going out again to-night," she told Lucile. "Wind's shifted.
It's offshore now and rising. There are certain effects of lights and
shadows which you get on the rim of a body of fresh water which you don't
in the sea ice. Sea ice is white, dull white, like snow. Fresh water ice
is blue; blue as the sky sometimes. I want to catch it before it blows
out again. But what brings you home so early, Lucile?"
"Cut my lecture. Headache," she explained, pressing her temples. "Nothing
much though. And, Marian," she exclaimed suddenly, "what do you think?
That story!"
"Did he take it?"
"The editor of the Literary Monthly? No, better than that."
"Could anything be better than that?"
"Lots of things."
"What _is_ better?"
"Listen," declaimed Lucile, striking a mock dramatic attitude. "He said,
the literary editor did, that it was too good for his _poor little
publication_! Fancy! 'His poor little publication!' My story too good! My
story! A freshman's story!" She burst into sudden laughter, but stopped
abruptly and sat down pressing her temples and groaning: "My poor head!"
"You never can tell about it--about stories," said Marian. "Heads either.
You'll have to go to bed early to-night and get a good night's sleep.
There's been entirely too much excitement on board these last few
nights."
"He said," Lucile went on, "that the Literary Monthly didn't pay for
stories. Of course I knew that. And he said that he thought I could sell
my story; that he thought it was good enough for that. The technique was
not quite perfect. There was too much explanation at the beginning and
the climax was short, but the theme and plot were unusual. He thought
that would put it over. He knew exactly the place to send it--'Seaside
Tales,' a new magazine just started by a very successful editor. He knows
him personally. He gave me a letter of introduction to him and I mailed
the story to him right away. So you see," she smiled folding her arms, "I
am to be an authoress, a--a second George Eliot, if you please!"
"But Seaside Tales is published right down town. Why did you mail it?"
"Do you think," said Lucile in real consternation, "that I would dare
beard that lion of an editor in his den? The editor of a real magazine
that pays genuine money for stories? Why I--I'd die of fright. Besides,
one does not do it. Really one doesn't."
"What was your story about?" asked Marian suddenly.
"Why, I--I wasn't going to tell, but I guess I will. It was about three
girls living on a yacht in a dry dock. And, one night in a storm the
yacht broke loose on the dry dock and went out into the water. Then it
drifted out to sea. Then, of course, they had to get back to land. Wasn't
that dramatic?"
"Yes, very!" smiled Marian. "Goodness! I hope it never happens to the O
Moo! Just think! Not one of us even knows how to start the engine."
"I mean to have Dr. Holmes show me the very next time he and Mrs. Holmes
come down."
"He'll think you're crazy."
"Maybe he will. But you never can tell."
That was one time when Lucile was right; in this queer old world you
never can tell.
When Florence returned from the university the shades of night were
already falling. There was, however, sufficient light to enable her to
follow the track of the sled she had seen the night before. This track
led straight across the park to the beach, then along the beach in the
direction of the dry dock. A few hundred yards from the dry dock it
turned suddenly to the left and was at once lost among the tumbled masses
of ice, where no trace of it could be found.
"Sled might be hidden out there," she mused.
For a time she contemplated going out in search of it. When, however, she
realized that it was growing quite dark, and recalled Lucile's unpleasant
experience of the night before, she decided not to venture.
"If they come back to the beach again," she told herself, "I can pick up
their tracks in the snow farther down."
Walking briskly, she covered the remaining distance to the spot on the
beach opposite the O Moo.
"Not yet," she whispered, and climbing over the trestle she made her way
on down the beach. Her eyes were always on the ground. Now she climbed a
trestle, now walked round an anchor frozen into the sand, but always her
eyes returned to the tracks in the snow. Tracks enough there were,
footprints of men, but never a trace of a sled leaving the ice.
She had gone a considerable distance when she became conscious of some
person not far away. On looking up she was startled to note that she had
reached a point opposite the great black scow where the Orientals lived.
At the end of the scow stood a man. His face disfigured by a scowl, he
stood watching her. He was dressed in the black gownlike garb of the
Chinese. He wore a queue. There was, however, something strange about his
face. She fancied she had seen him somewhere before, but where she could
not tell.
Then the man moved out of the light that shone on him from a window and
was swallowed up by the shadows.
"No use going farther," she told herself. "If the sled belongs on the dry
dock somewhere it would be the easiest thing in the world for two persons
to lift it on their shoulders and carry it in from the ice. That would
throw one completely off the trail."
Turning, she retraced her steps along the beach to the trestle work on
which the O Moo rested, then swinging about to the right she made her way
to the yacht's side.
Once on deck, she made certain that the other girls were aboard, then
retraced her steps to the deck's side, where she pulled down the canvas
and tied it securely. For a moment she stood listening to the lash of
ropes on the mast. The canvas covering bulged and sagged. Cool air fanned
her cheeks.
"Going to be a bad storm," she told herself. "Offshore wind, too. All the
ice will go out to-night, and everything with it that isn't tied down."
When all was tight on deck she slipped into the cabin.
Lucile, who ate very little dinner that night, retired early. Marian
studied until nine-thirty. The clock pointed at eleven when Florence,
with a sigh of regret, put down her psychology to prepare for sleep.
"Whew!" she breathed, "what a storm! Listen to the canvas boom! Like a
schooner at sea! Hope it doesn't tear the canvas away. Hope it doesn't--"
She did not finish the sentence. The thought which had come to her was
too absurd.
Once snugly tucked in her bed, she found her mind returning to the
morning's discovery. What did that new ice on the lagoon mean? Why had
the hole been cut? Why was the ice blue? Did the sled and the man sitting
on the ice the night before have anything to do with it? Did the man cut
that hole? If so, why?
He might, she told herself, have had something to conceal, some
valuables, stolen diamonds or gold. But how could he hope to recover it
if he dropped it through a hole in the ice. The water beneath the ice was
always murky and there was a strong current there. Anything dropped
beneath that ice would be lost forever.
She remembered the two policemen whom Lucile had seen on the beach that
same night. Perhaps those two men had been running from the officers,
trying to conceal something. But how had the man come there on the ice?
Perhaps--she started at the thought--perhaps this man rode there beneath
the sled. The runners had been extraordinarily broad. A man could easily
ride between them. The thought gave her a start.
She thought of Lucile's experience in the old Mission, and of her own
with the blue candlestick. Perhaps, she told herself, they dropped the
blue god through the ice.
Then she smiled at herself. How could the blue god be in Chicago? If it
were they would never drop it in the water beneath the ice where it could
never be recovered. Yet why had the ice been blue? Why--
She fell asleep, to listen in her dreams to the lash of ropes, the boom
of canvas and to dream of riding a frail craft on a storm-tossed sea.
It would be difficult to determine just why it is that one knows how long
he has slept, yet we very often do know. One wakens in the middle of the
night and before the clock strikes the hour he says to himself, "I have
slept three hours." And he is right.
When Florence awoke that night she knew she had been asleep for about
five hours. It was dark, pitch dark, in the cabin. The storm was still
raging.
"Just listen," she murmured dreamily, "One could easily imagine that we
were out to sea."
There was a tremendous booming of canvas and a lashing sound which
resembled the wash of the waves, but this last, she told herself, was the
ropes beating the mast. She had dozed off again when some strange element
of the storm brought her once more half awake.
"One would almost say the yacht was pitching," she thought as in a dream,
"but she's firmly fastened. It is impossible. She--"
Suddenly she sat up fully awake. She had moved a trifle closer to the
porthole. Her head had been banged against it.
"It _is_ pitching!" she exclaimed in an awed whisper.
Her mind whirled. What had happened? Was the storm so violent that the O
Moo was being rocked from side to side on her trestle. Would she soon
topple over, to go crashing on the frozen sand? Or had they in some way
been blown out to sea?
This last seemed impossible. She thought of the block beneath the wheels
of the car on which the O Moo stood, then of the strong cable fastened to
her prow.
"It _is_ impossible!" she muttered.
There was one way to prove this. She proceeded to apply the test.
Turning a screw which held her porthole closed, she swung the metal
framed glass wide open.
Instantly she slammed it shut. She had been soaked with a perfect deluge
of water.
Her heart stopped beating. She tried to shout to the other girls, but her
tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. There could no longer be any doubt
concerning the nature of the catastrophe which had come over them. How it
had happened, she could not even guess. This much she knew: _They were
afloat._
"Girls! Girls!" Her own voice shouted to her like that of a ghost,
"Marian! Lucile! Wake up! We're afloat! The O Moo's adrift!"
Marian groaned; sat up quickly, then as quickly fell back again. Her head
had collided with a beam.
"What--what's the matter?" she stammered.
There came a low moan from Lucile: "I'm so sick."
"Seasick. Poor child," said Florence.
"No--no, not that." Lucile's voice was faint. "It's my head--it's
splitting. I can't raise it. I--I'm afraid it's going to be--be--bad."
Florence leaped to the floor. Her feet splashed into a thin sheet of
water which washed about on the carpet. The cold chill of it brought her
to her senses. They were afloat.
Someone had cast them adrift. Was that someone on deck at this moment or
had he merely cut the cable, removed the blocks and allowed the wind to
do the rest? This must be determined at once.
Hastily dragging some rubbers on her benumbed feet, she splashed her way
to the door. Having made sure that this was securely locked, she went to
each window and porthole, fastening each as securely as possible. This
done, she fought her way to Lucile's berth and, steadying herself with
one hand, placed the other on Lucile's brow.
An exclamation escaped her lips. The forehead was burning hot. Lucile had
a raging fever.
"If I had the coward who cut us loose," she cried through clenched teeth,
"I--I'd kill him!"