A MESSAGE AFLOAT
The girls awakened, greatly refreshed from the nap they had taken, lying
on the warm sunny sand, while Winston and Peggy had gone fishing to
provide food for the next meal. It was two-thirty by Margaret’s faithful
wrist watch when they arose and sauntered down to the shore. They saw
the small raft returning and by the merry shouting of Peggy, they were
sure that the catch had been a large one.
When the queer craft had been secured on the beach, Virginia said,
“Winston, we girls were just thinking that we would like to go to the
side of the island on which we landed, make a fire or in some way
attempt to attract attention of the people on the mainland, who, we are
sure, must by this time have started out in search of us.”
“Righto!” the lad cried, then leaping ahead of them, he disappeared in
the hut, to soon return with a bottle, “I dug this up yesterday on the
shore and I planned using it in a way that might bring help to my sister
and me.”
“Oh, I know!” Betsy clapped her hands gleefully. “You planned writing a
message, enclosing it in an air-tight bottle and setting it afloat.
Wasn’t that it, Winston?”
“The very thing, and let’s do it now. I have a pencil,” the lad said,
producing a well-worn stub.
“What shall we do for paper?” Eleanor had just asked, when Margaret
answered her: “Birch bark makes the best kind of paper. I saw a tree on
the edge of the little wood.”
“True enough,” Winston exclaimed, as he bounded away, returning a few
moments later with a strip of bark. The message was written, placed in
the bottle and securely corked.
“I wish we had something to tie on the neck of the bottle to make it
more noticeable,” Virginia began when Betsy snatched a cherry-red ribbon
from her hair.
“The very thing!” the lad exclaimed. “Now, let’s cross the island. There
is a much shorter way than that by which you came.”
“Hurray for us!” the lad cried half an hour later, when they stood on
the shore near where the girls had landed. “Luck is with us! The wind
and tide are just right to carry our message rapidly toward the
mainland.”
Taking off his shoes and stockings, Winston waded far out on the shoal
and then he lightly tossed the bottle into the deep water beyond. It
partly sank, then rose. The wind caught in the loops of the red ribbon
bow making sails that soon carried the bobbing bottle out of their
sight.
“I have often made a fire on this shore at night,” Winston said,
pointing to a charred place among the rocks, “but it evidently aroused
no one’s curiosity. It is well for Peggy and for me that I studied
woodcraft when I was a Boy Scout in England and learned to make a fire
without matches,” he told them as they retraced their steps to the side
of the island on which their host and wee hostess lived.
* * * * *
In the meantime the three lads from Drexel Academy were slowly cruising
along the coast. Every now and then they would go as close as they
dared, and all three, making megaphones of their hands, would shout:
“Virginia Davis! Barbara Wente!” over and over, but only echoes from the
cliff replied. Occasionally a sea bird startled by their cries would
circle about them, but no other living thing was seen.
“This is a lost hope,” Benjy said, at last. “We have been cruising up
and down this coast for two hours, in fact, nearly three, and so we
might as well give up.”
“The wind is getting pretty brisk and since it is from the sea, we’ll
have to tack out quite a bit to make the port we started from,” Jack
said. He then pushed the rudder handle and the bow swung into the wind.
“We’ll have to go at least a mile out to sea,” Dick agreed, “if we make
the fisherman’s dock on one tack.”
“That’s hard luck,” Benjy spoke regretfully. “I hate to waste the time,
but of course we must get the old boat back. Make the best speed you
can, boys.”
Dick and Jack were experienced sailors, while Benjy, desert-born, knew
nothing whatever of the management of a boat.
For a long half hour they scudded in silence which was suddenly broken
by an exclamation from the boy at the rudder. “Hi, you, Ben! Look over
to starboard. What’s that red thing bobbing up and down.”
“Looks like a bottle floating this way. Turn about, can’t you, so that
we can sail close enough to pick it up?”
“I’m afraid I can’t make it, old man,” Jack replied. “If we swing that
way an inch more we’ll lose the wind out of our sails.”
They were scudding away from the bottle when Benjy shouted excitedly:
“Never mind if we do lose headway, I want to get that bottle. I believe
that red thing on it is a girl’s hair ribbon and I’d never forgive
myself if there was a message in it from Babs and the rest of them.”
“Well, I’ll take a tack that way, if you say so, but of course the
bottle can’t hold a message from the girls since it is sailing directly
in from somewhere out at sea. More than likely it was dropped from a
ship in distress.”
“Well, even so. It’s up to us to get it, whoever set it afloat.”
“Benjy is right,” Dick agreed. “There, now we’re making straight for
it.”
“Hold the boat steady,” Benjy called. “I’ll lean way over and try to
grab it when it’s near enough.”
But holding the boat steady with the sails flapping in an
ever-increasing wind proved to be an impossible feat.
“Pull on the sheet! Quick!” was Jack’s sharp command. “We’re bearing
right down on it. Gee whiz! We hit it! Now, like as not, it’s broken.”
But the bottle, evidently unharmed, slid around the boat and bobbed up
on the other side. Making a lunge which nearly resulted in his falling
overboard, Benjy secured the prize, and holding it up, he could plainly
see the birch bark inside which he was convinced held some message.
“There’s only one way to it,” Dick told him, “that’s to break the
bottle.”
This was easily done and the piece of birch bark fell out.
The three boys crowded round to try to decipher the blurred pencil
marks.
“It’s unbelievable!” Benjy stood up and shading his eyes, gazed out
toward the bank of mist which nearly always hung like a curtain between
the mainland and the island.
Then, with a whoop of joy, he shouted, “Look yonder! A fishing launch is
coming in. Let’s hire one of the men to sail The Nancy back to its dock
and the other to take us over to the island.”
“The very thing!” As he spoke Jack stood up and waved his coat. The
other boys did likewise, then, when they were sure that they had
attracted attention, they beckoned and shouted. The two fishermen in the
launch, believing that the boys were in trouble, decided to change their
course, and so before long, they were within speaking distance. Upon
hearing the story, they readily agreed to comply with the boys’ plans
and fifteen minutes later, the launch was headed directly for the bank
of mist, while the Nancy was tacking leisurely toward the mainland. At
that same moment, the young people on the island had made an exciting
discovery.