THE MAP'S SECRET
While all these things were happening to the boys on the seaplane,
Curlie Carson and Joe Marion were working hard to repair the damage done
to their radiophone set by the lightning. With the boat pitching about
as it was, and with the wind and waves keeping up a constant din, it was
a difficult task.
Just what coils and instruments had been burned out it was difficult to
tell. All these must be tested out by the aid of a storage battery. When
the defective parts had been discarded, it was necessary to piece
together, out of the remaining parts and the extra equipment, an
entirely new set.
"Have to use a two-stage amplifier," shouted Curlie, making himself
heard above the storm.
"Lower voltage on the grid, too," Joe shouted back.
"Guess it'll be fairly good, though," said Curlie, working feverishly.
"Only hope it didn't burn out the insulation on our aerials. Want to get
her going again quick. Want to bad. Lot may depend on that."
The insulation on the aerials was not burned out. After many minutes of
nerve-racking labor they had the equipment together again and were ready
to listen in.
Curlie flashed a short message in code, giving the name of their boat
and its present location, then, with the receiver tightly clamped over
his ears, he settled back in his chair.
For some time they sat there in silence, the two boys and Gladys
Ardmore.
The beat of the waves was increasing. The wind was still rising, but as
yet no rain was falling.
"Queer storm," shouted Joe. "Haven't gotten into it yet. Will though and
it's going to be bad. Skipper says the only thing we can do is to fasten
down all the hatches and hold her nose to the storm."
"Better see about the hatches," shouted Curlie.
Throwing open the door, letting in a dash of salt spray and a cold rush
of wind as he did so, Joe disappeared into the dark.
Curlie and the girl were alone. The seat the girl occupied was clamped
solidly to the wall. It had broad, strong arms and to these she clung.
She was staring at the floor and seemed half asleep.
When Joe disappeared, Curlie once more became conscious of her presence
and at once he was disturbed. Who would not have been disturbed at the
thought of a delicate girl, accustomed to every luxury, being thrown
into such desperate circumstances as they were in at the present moment.
"Not my fault," he grumbled to himself. "I didn't want her to go.
Wouldn't have allowed her, either, had I known about it."
"Not your fault?" his inner self chided him. "Suppose you didn't plan
this trip?"
"Well, anyway," he grumbled, "she needn't have come along, and,
besides, circumstances have justified my theories. They are out here
somewhere, those two boys, and since they are it's up to someone to try
to save them."
Then suddenly he remembered that he had something to say to the girl. He
opened his mouth to shout to her, but closed it again.
"Better wait till Joe comes," he told himself. "The more people there
are to hear it, the more chances there are of its getting back to
shore."
Joe blew back into the cabin a few moments later.
"Everything all right?" Curlie shouted.
At the sound of his voice, the girl started, looked up, then smiled; Joe
nodded his head.
"Say, Joe, I'm hungry," shouted Curlie. "There's bread in the forward
cabin and some milk in a thermos bottle. Couldn't manage coffee, but
toast and milk'd be fine."
The girl sprang to her feet as if to go for the required articles, but
Joe pushed her back into her chair.
"Not for you," he shouted. "It's gettin' dangerous."
"Joe," said Curlie, "there's a small electric toaster there in the
cabin. Disconnect it and bring it in here. We'll connect it up and make
the toast right here."
When the toaster had been connected, the girl, happy in the knowledge
that she was able to be of service, toasted the bread to a brown quite
as delicate as that to be found on a landlubber's table.
"Now," said Curlie as they sat enjoying this meager repast, "I've got
something to tell you, something that I want someone else beside me to
know. It's going to be an ugly storm and the _Kittlewake_ is no
trans-Atlantic liner. We may all get back to shore. We may not. If one
of you do and I don't, I want you to tell this. It--it will sort of
justify my apparent rashness in dragging you off on this wild trip."
He moved his chair close to the stationary seat of the girl and,
gripping one of the arms of the seat, motioned Joe to move up beside
them. It was only thus that he might be heard unless he were to shout at
the top of his voice.
"You know," he said, a strange smile playing over his thin lips, "you
folks probably have thought it strange that I should go rushing off on a
trip like this without any positive knowledge that those two boys had
started for that mysterious island shown on the map and spoken of in the
writing on the back of the map, but you see I had more information than
you thought. This I know for an almost positive fact," he leaned forward
impressively: "The mysterious island of the chart does not exist."
"Oh!" the girl started back.
"It's a fact," said Curlie, "and I'll give you my proof."
He paused for a second. The girl leaned forward eagerly. Joe was all
attention.
"When I went into that big library," he continued, "I was determined to
find all the truth regarding that map that was to be had there. While
you were looking at those ancient maps," he turned to Gladys, "I went
into a back room and there the lady in charge gave me some bound
reproductions of ancient maps to look at and some things to read, among
them a volume of the 'Scottish Geographic Magazine.' I read them through
carefully and--"
Suddenly he started violently, then clasped the receivers close to his
ears.
"Just a moment. Getting something," he muttered.
A second later he seized a pencil and marked down upon a pad a series of
dots and dashes.
Then, wheeling about, he put his fingers on a key to flash back an
answer.
"It's the boys," he shouted. "Got their location. Joe, decode what I
wrote there, then go ask the skipper how much we're off it."
He turned once more to click off his message, a repetition of the first
one; then he shouted a second message into his transmitter.
Joe Marion studied the pad for a moment, then rushed out of the cabin.
All alert, Curlie sat listening for any further message which might
reach him. Presently Joe returned. There was a puzzled look upon his
face.
"Skipper says," he shouted, "that the point you gave me is the exact
location of the island shown on that ancient map and that we must be
about ten knots to the north of it. When I told him that the boys were
in a seaplane at that point, he suddenly became convinced that there
must be an island out there somewhere and refused to change his course.
"'For,' he says, 'if they've been sending messages from a plane in a
gale like this they must be on the ground to do it and if on the ground,
where but on an island? And if there's an island, how are we going to
get up to her in the storm that's about to hit us. We'll be piled on the
rocks and smashed in pieces.' That's what he said; said we'd be much
safer in the open sea."
Curlie stared at the floor. His mind was in a whirl. Here he had been
about to furnish proof that the mysterious island did not exist and just
at that instant there came floating in from the air proof of the
island's actual existence, proof so strong that even a seasoned old salt
believed it and refused to change his course. What was he to say to
that!
Fortunately, or unfortunately, he was to be given time enough to think
about it, for at that moment, with an unbelievable violence the storm
broke.
As they felt the impact of it, it was as if the staunch little craft had
run head on into one of those steel nets used during the war for
trapping submarines. She struck it and from the very force of the blow,
recoiled. The thing she had struck, however, was not a steel net but a
mountain of waters flanked by such a volume of wind as is seldom seen on
the Atlantic.
"It's the end of the _Kittlewake_," thought Curlie. "You take care of
her," he shouted in Joe's ear, at the same time jerking his thumb at
Gladys. The next second he disappeared into the storm.