A SIGNAL OF DISTRESS.
“Hullo! What’s that?”
Tom set down his paint pot and listened intently. Jack crawled out from
under the bottom of the _Wondership_ which he had been coating with an
extra application of waterproof bronze.
“Sounded like a gun,” he said after a second.
“It did, for a fact. Jove! Hark at the wind.”
As he spoke a gust shook the rather lightly-built shed.
“Must have come on a bit rough while we were at work,” commented Jack.
“I hope it isn’t too squally for our trial trip.”
Whatever Tom might have responded to this speech will never be known,
for at that instant came another report.
“B-o-o-m!” The echoes came dully shoreward, borne on a flaw of squally
wind.
“It _is_ a gun,” cried Tom, “but what in the world——”
“Let’s duck out and see. Hurry up!”
Jack made off and Tom followed. They did not go out of the front end
of the shed, though big doors running on rollers opened to seaward.
Instead they made for a small “accommodation” door in the rear of the
shed. It was alongside this that the watcher had bored his observation
hole. He had just time to slip around a corner and fling himself face
downward in a patch of spiky sea-grass before the boys ran out.
“Lucky those kids didn’t see me,” he muttered. “I feel half ashamed
of spying on them like this. But it’s all in the game, I suppose. If I
don’t run down this assignment it means hunting another job, and I’ve
worked on every paper in Boston but the one I’m on now; and I haven’t
got the fare to go anywhere else job hunting.”
He watched the two boys run up to the summit of a big dune which
commanded a broad view to seaward.
“By the horntoads of Herrington,” he exclaimed under his breath, “now’s
my chance! I’ll get a few snaps while they’re out of the shed and then
dig back. It’s taking a long chance and may be a rotten sort of thing
to do, but I’ve simply got to make good.”
He rose from his place of hiding and, dexterously dodging among dunes
and sand hummocks, made his way to the shed and darted inside by the
small door from which the boys had just emerged. If he was surprised,
he counted on managing to hide in some place of security till he got
a chance to escape. Dick Donovan, cub reporter on the _Boston Evening
Eagle_, was a young man of much resource, though at present hardly
an example to be emulated. Still, as he owned to himself and as his
editor had informed him that morning, it was a case of “making good”
or getting what the editor termed the “G. B.”—which being interpreted,
meant, as poor Dick knew only too well, the “Grand Bounce.”
As is the habit in newspaper offices, such a seemingly hopeless
assignment as running down “The Mystery of the Skies” had been given to
the cub reporter, the reason being that he might just as well waste his
time on that apparently forlorn hope as on anything more promising. But
Dick, who was by no means the “bone-head” his indignant editor mentally
termed him, worked on the assignment like a beaver. He recalled hearing
of the Boy Inventors and their various contrivances, and he formed a
conviction that if he could run them down he would arrive at a point
near to the solution of the mystery of the flying lights. It had been
a matter of some difficulty to find out the present whereabouts of the
boys, but the indomitable Dick had finally done it. His inquiries had
led him to the lonely shed amidst the wind-driven dunes, and to the
beginning of what he would have called “a galloping grasshopper of a
yarn.”
As the boys gained the top of the dune they saw the yacht, standing
out in white relief against the slaty background of cloud that rolled
up from the east. She rose and fell slowly on the sullen sea, and they
could see that a vagrant cloud of bluish smoke was rolling away from
her. No doubt, then, that it was she that had fired the guns.
By some instinct Jack had snatched up a pair of glasses as they ran
out of the shed. They were instruments used by the boys to scan anyone
approaching their shed from a distance. He now turned these on the
distant yacht. The next instant he uttered an exclamation:
“There’s trouble aboard out there as sure as you’re a foot high!”
“Can you make out what it is? They’re pretty close in, and those Baking
Pan Shoals run out quite a way. Maybe they’re aground,” ventured Tom.
“No; it’s not that; at least, I don’t think so. There appears to be
trouble on the yacht itself. She’s flying an ensign, Jack down, in her
after rigging. Wow!”
“What’s up now?”
“There’s a chap trying to pull the ensign down!” cried Jack, with the
glasses still to his eyes.
“Jove!” he rushed on, “there’s another chap pulling him away from the
halliards. Now there’s a regular fight on! Say, Tom, that yacht’s just
sizzling right now!”
“They need help.”
“Well, it sure looks so! Hullo, some men on the stern appear to have
driven back the others, among them the chap who tried to pull down the
flag.”
“It’s a sure thing, then, that there is some sort of mutiny on board.”
“Looks that way,” admitted Jack; “they fired those guns for help. I
wonder——”
“I have it,” broke in Tom. “There used to be a life-saving station
right here because of the shoals. It’s marked on the charts. Although
it was abandoned two years ago, those fellows saw our shed ashore and
they think it’s the life-saving station. It’s to us they’re signalling!”
“Christmas! I’ll bet you’re right. There’s nothing else in the shape of
a house up and down the beach for miles, and the summer cottagers have
not arrived yet. Yes, they’re appealing to us, Tom; but I don’t see
what we’re going to do about it.”
“You don’t?”
There was an odd look in Tom’s eyes as he spoke.
The next instant there was a flash and a puff of smoke from the stern
of the yacht, where Jack had made out some figures standing in a little
group. The others had retreated forward. The report of the signal gun
was borne to their ears a few seconds later.
“If only we had a boat,” burst out Jack. “I just hate to think of those
fellows out there in trouble, and we not able to raise a finger to
help!”
“Oh, but we are,” spoke Tom quietly. Jack looked at him swiftly and
then almost involuntarily both boys’ eyes rested on the shed behind
them.
“Jove, Tom! Have you got the nerve to try it?”
“Sure thing. We planned to make the test anyhow to-day. What better
opportunity?”
“It’s blowing up for bad weather, Tom,” remonstrated Jack, who was far
less impetuous than his cousin.
“Well, we’ve got to expect to get caught in that sometime. Besides, I
don’t think it will blow very hard.”
Like many other people, men as well as boys, Tom had a way of
minimizing obstacles when he wanted to do anything very much, and
the scene on the yacht had aroused his curiosity to the utmost. Jack
thought a minute and then scanned the sky carefully. Dark clouds were
piling up and the sea looked leaden and ugly. The wind was not steady
but came in sharp gusts and flaws.
“Maybe we’ve got time to get out there and back before it comes on real
bad,” he admitted.
“Of course we have. Come on.”
Tom started on a run for the shed that housed the _Wondership_. As he
went, he flung back word to Jack to “hustle.” From the ship came a
fourth booming report.
“They’re watching us through glasses,” said Jack, as they ploughed
through the sand. “They’ve guessed that we are going to help them
somehow.”
“That means that we’ve _got_ to make good,” was Tom’s comment.
They had almost gained the shed door when they saw coming toward them
across the dunes a solitary figure, making its way with difficulty over
the heavy sand.
“It’s dad!” cried Jack. “He has come to make us a visit, and left the
machine back there on the road.”
“That’s so. It is Uncle Chester, sure enough,” assented Tom rather
gloomily. “I guess our trial trip is off right now.”
“Yes; I don’t think he’d allow us to take out the _Wondership_ in such
weather as this promises to be,” agreed Jack with equal ruefulness.
“Still, something should be done to aid those poor people out there.”
“Hullo! What’s the matter with him?” cried Tom in an astonished voice
the next instant, for, on seeing the boys, the usually dignified
Professor Chadwick had broken into a run. As he floundered along he
was shouting excitedly words that they could not catch, and waving
something in his hand.