THE MIRACLE
They were all straining their eyes when at last the thing appeared once
more on the crest of the wave.
"Wreckage! A mass of it!" came from the skipper.
"And--and there's a hand!" exclaimed Curlie.
"The paddles, boys! The paddles! Every 'and of you, hup an' at it,"
shouted the skipper.
The wildest excitement prevailed, yet out of it all there came quick and
concerted action. Three paddles flashed as, straining every muscle, they
strove to bring the clumsy raft nearer the wreck. With tears in her
eyes, the girl begged and implored them to unwrap her and allow her to
have a hand in the struggle.
A minute passed. No longer chilled but steaming from violent exertion,
they strained eager eyes to catch another glimpse of the wreck.
"There--there it is!" exclaimed the girl, overcome with joy. "You're
gaining! You're gaining!"
Five minutes passed. They gained half the distance. Eight minutes more;
the hand on the wreckage rose again. They were getting nearer.
Suddenly the girl uttered a piercing cry of joy:
"It is Vincent! It is! It is!"
And she was right. A moment later, as they dragged the all but senseless
form from the seaplane, they recognized him at once as the millionaire's
son.
He had drifted in the benumbing water so long that had they been delayed
for another hour they would have found nothing more than a corpse
awaiting them.
As Curlie tore Vincent's sodden outer garments from him he saw the girl
carefully unrolling the blankets and oiled covering from about her. He
did not protest. To him the thought of seeing this girl half drowned and
chilled through by the spray which even now at times dashed over the
raft, was heartbreaking, but he knew it was necessary if the life of her
brother was to be saved.
"Brave girl!" he murmured as he wrapped Vincent in the coverings and
passed him on to the skipper.
"And now," he said, "the time has come to think of other things. I
believe the waves have sufficiently subsided to enable us to dare it."
He fumbled once more at the raft, at last to bring up a long,
post-shaped affair.
"More rations," murmured Joe, swallowing his last bite of hardtack; "a
regular commissary. But why get them out at this time?"
"You wait," smiled Curlie.
He was standing up. After telling Joe to steady him, he began tearing
away at the upper end of the mysterious package. In a moment, he took
out some limp, rubber affairs.
"Toy balloons," jeered Joe.
"Something like that," Curlie smiled.
He next brought out a small brass retort and a tiny spirit lamp.
"Lucky our matches are dry," he murmured, after unwrapping some oiled
cloth and lighting the spirit lamp with one of the matches inclosed.
After firmly tying the end of a toy balloon over the mouth of the retort
he held the spirit lamp beneath the bowl of the retort. At once the
balloon began to expand.
"Chemicals already in the retort," he explained.
When the balloon was sufficiently inflated, he quickly tied it at the
mouth, then began inflating another.
"The gas is very buoyant," he explained. "Hold that," he said as he
passed the string to the engineer.
"There's enough," he said quietly when the third had been filled.
He next drew forth some shiny fine copper wire coiled about some round,
insulated bars.
When he had fastened the balloons to one end of the bars, he attached a
strong cord to the balloons, then allowed them to rise, at the same time
paying out the strands of copper wire.
"Not very heavy wire for an aerial," he remarked, "but heavy enough.
We'll have a perpendicular aerial, which is better than horizontal, and
it'll hang pretty high. All that's in our favor."
When the balloons had risen to a height which allowed the aerial, to
which was attached a heavier insulated wire, to float free, he gave the
cord to the engineer and began busying himself at putting together what
appeared to be a small windmill with curved, brass fans.
"A windmill," he explained, "is the surest method of obtaining a little
power. Always a little breeze floating round. Enough to turn a wheel.
This one is connected direct with a small generator. Gives power enough
for a radiophone. Might use batteries but they might go dead on you.
Windmill and generator is as good after ten years as ten days.
"There you are," he heaved a sigh of relief, as he struck the
transmitter which he had taken from his apparently inexhaustible "bag of
tricks."
"Unless I miss my guess, we have a perfectly good radiophone outfit of
fair power. All the rest of it is stowed down there in the bottom. We
should be heard distinctly at from a hundred to five hundred miles. In
the future," he smiled, "every lifeboat and raft will be equipped with
one of these handy little radiophone outfits, which are really not very
expensive."
Then, with all eyes fixed upon him, he began to converse with the unseen
and unknown, who, sailing somewhere on that vast sweep of water, were,
they hoped, to become their rescuers.
In perfectly natural tones he spoke of their catastrophe and their
present predicament. He gave their approximate location and the names of
their party. This after an interval of two minutes, he repeated.
Then, suddenly his lips parted in a smile. The others watched him with
strained attention. After a minute had elapsed, he said with apparent
satisfaction:
"We'll await your arrival with unmixed pleasure.
"The Steamship Torrence," he explained, "in crossing the Atlantic was
driven two hundred miles off her course. She is now only about
seventy-five miles from us. Being a fast boat, she should reach us in
three or four hours.
"And now," he said with a smile, "since we have no checker-board on deck
and are entirely deprived of musical instruments of any kind, perhaps
you would like to hear me tell why I was sure the mysterious island
which has caused us so much grief, did not exist."
"By the way," he said turning to Vincent, "do you chance to have the
original of that old map with you?"
The boy pointed to his aviator's sodden leather coat. Although he had
gained much strength from the warm blankets, he had found himself
unable to speak of the tragedy which had befallen his companion on the
_Stormy Petrel_. Now as he saw Curlie draw the water-soaked map from the
pocket of his coat, a look of horror overspread his face and he muttered
hoarsely:
"Throw it into the sea. It brings nothing but bad luck."
"No, no," said Curlie, "we won't do that."
"Then you must keep it," the other boy exclaimed. "I don't want ever to
see it again. Alfred made me a present of it just before we hopped off."
"All right," said Curlie, "but you are parting with a thing of some
value."
"Value!" exclaimed Vincent. Then he sat staring at Curlie in silence as
much as to say: "You too must have been bitten by the gold-bug." But
that Curlie had not been bitten by that dangerous and poisonous insect
will be proved, I think, by the pages which follow.